Screenplay:Ranald MacDougall and Ben Maddow (uncredited), based upon a story by Carl Stephenson

Synopsis:Joanna Selby (Eleanor Parker) travels from New Orleans to Brazil, to the cocoa plantation of the husband-by-proxy she has never met, Christopher Leiningen (Charlton Heston). On her journey up the Amazon River, also on board the boat is the District Commissioner (William Conrad), who smilingly reveals that he stood in for Joanna during the ceremony—as well as performing it. Joanna comments laughingly that he is almost one of the family, and asks if he will be stopping at the plantation. At this, the Commissioner sobers, saying only that he has urgent business further up river. He also evades Joanna’s questions about what her husband is like. Alighting at Leiningen’s dock, Joanna is dismayed when no-one is there to meet her, and becomes nervous under the silent gaze of the locals. However, Leiningen’s head man, Incacha (Abraham Sofaer), soon arrives and greets her solemnly, but reveals that Leiningen is busy and will not be coming. Incacha takes Joanna by horse-drawn carriage to the sprawling mansion that is her new home, and a maid, Zala (Norma Calderon), leads her to her rooms. It is some hours later before Leiningen returns from on horseback from working in the jungle. As Joanna peeps nervously over her balcony, she sees him arbitrating a dispute amongst a group of his workers, and sees one of them, a young man, being dragged away. Joanna then retreats, as Leiningen walks rather grimly towards the house. Taking the plunge, he enters Joanna’s room. The first meeting is not propitious: confronted by a woman who seems too good to be true, Leiningen is suspicious, almost hostile, questioning her about her motives in marrying him. Joanna tries to be conciliatory, but Leiningen takes offence when he suspects that she is laughing at him. Dinner, too is uncomfortable, as Joanna’s efforts to make conversation fall flat. Leiningen continues to cross-question Joanna about her accomplishments, probing for some kind of fault—and to his mind finds it when Joanna reveals that she was married before. When Leiningen, recoiling from her, tells her bitterly that he will have nothing in his house that isn’t new, an outraged Joanna storms off. Things remain tense over the following days, and reach a crisis when, one night, a drunken Leiningen bursts into Joanna’s bedroom—only to retreat when he finds her not only unafraid of him, but contemptuously unresponsive; even sorry for him. Embarrassed and ashamed, the next day Leiningen tells her that she had better leave; that shortly there will be a boat to take her back to civilisation. Before that, however, the Commissioner arrives. It is immediately evident to him that something is very wrong between Leiningen and Joanna, and he is dismayed when he learns that she is leaving. When Joanna has retired, the exasperated Commissioner tries to expostulate, but Leiningen cuts him short by asking him what his business is upriver? Lowering his voice, the Commissioner reveals that there are rumours of trouble in the Rio Negro basin, the worst kind of trouble: marabunta – soldier ants…

Comments:Given my obsession with “in order”, I don’t suppose any of you will be surprised to hear that I have a parallel obsession with figuring out what’s “first”; can’t have one without the other, after all. Some film genres are naturally harder to classify than others, being more about the way their stories work themselves out than about specific story elements; and along with the disaster movie, perhaps the hardest of all to define is the killer animal film.

Right from the early days of cinema, there were plenty of films that featured a killer animal—but that’s not the same thing as a killer animal film. Most of the time in these films, the animal is merely a subplot, a distraction; either a commentary upon the main action, as in movies like Tiger Shark, or just there to provide an exciting climax. Even in proto-killer animal films such as The Sea Bat and the gloriously awful Devil Monster, the animal is not really what the film is about.

And by applying that particular yardstick, I’ve picked out The Naked Jungle as the first ever true killer animal film, which may seem to some a controversial choice. Certainly there’s no denying that for the first hour of its ninety-one minute running-time, this film is a romantic melodrama of the most unabashed kind. Those coming to it in search of a killer animal film may well become impatient, and be disappointed in it as a consequence.

However, once the ants announce their presence – as they do via an ominous combination of an eerily quiet jungle, a deserted native village, and a human skeleton stripped to the bone – The Naked Jungle becomes, indeed, entirely about the ants; while the emotional travails of its central characters recede into the background. And if viewers are able to accept this structure, and to just sit back and enjoy the ride without growing frustrated by the wait, they may well find themselves unexpectedly rewarded.

Mind you— I admit quite frankly that I’m prejudiced in The Naked Jungle’s favour. This is one of the films that I grew up on, and which has maintained its charm for me no matter how many times I’ve seen it over the years. The first time , as I recall, was one night when I was unable to sleep, and got up to watch The Late Movie instead.

Even at what was quite a tender age, I had a great passion for the output of The Golden Years Of Hollywood, and I ate up this hitherto unknown example…right up until a particular moment in the middle of the climactic ant attack, when a local makes the fatal mistake of dozing off when he’s supposed to be guarding the dam that holds back the river waters from Leiningen’s plantation. In an instant he is covered with ants, and dies with his hands clamped over his face and screaming in agony, “MY EYES!! MY EYES!!”

Oh, yes, I remember that. I remember cringing back in my armchair with my knees tucked up under my chin, clamping my hands over my face while making whimpering noises like a puppy. This is, in fact, one of the films to which I attribute my lifelong horror of eye-violence; although perversely, this has had the effect of increasing rather than dissipating my affection for it. Over time The Naked Jungle became one of my family’s “pet” films, as indicated by the entering of some of its dialogue into our vernacular. (Particularly one dinner-table exchange, for reasons that will become obvious.)

Another rather twisted attraction of The Naked Jungle is that it is, for better or worse, very much “a Charlton Heston film”. I know he isn’t to everyone’s taste, but I’ve always had an amused kind of admiration for Chuck and his bigger-than-life-ness. Let’s face it: whatever you make of him as an actor, few stars could ever bear the weight of a major production the way that Charlton Heston could. For all that stars get paid such outrageous sums these days, how many of them can actually carry a film so comprehensively? They just don’t seem to make personalities that big any more. Or perhaps – as a very wise woman once said – it’s the pictures that got small.

(That said— Heston could underplay, on those rare occasions when he was asked to do so. His performance in The Big Country is my favourite in that respect.)

But if Chuck and his over-the-top approach aren’t to your taste, The Naked Jungle offers as an alternative attraction the wondrous sight of Eleanor Parker, dressed to the nines by Edith Head and photographed in glorious Technicolor—and if anyone was ever born to be photographed in Technicolor, it was surely Eleanor Parker.

However, lovely as she was, Parker never allowed herself to be no more than set-dressing. She was a gutsy actress who wasn’t afraid to play an unsympathetic role, and who always gave the impression of steel under silk. The fact that she holds her own here against Chuck in full cry speaks for itself. The Naked Jungle makes a good companion-piece for the previous year’s Escape From Fort Bravo, which finds Parker in a similarly antagonistic romance with William Holden (he’s a Union officer, she’s a Confederate spy), and which likewise boasts an amazingly tense climactic sequence.

In The Naked Jungle, the climax is of course the arrival of the ants at Leiningen’s plantation, and his desperate battle to save the property to which he has devoted almost half his life, and which, as he puts it, he, “Took from the jungle with my bare hands”. The final third of the film encompasses nearly the whole of its source, the famous short story by Carl Stephenson called Leiningen Versus The Ants, which is entirely focused upon the battle between the stubborn, single-minded planter and his swarming adversaries.

Though this is not, in the usual sense, a “special effects film”, this extended sequence does feature any number of extremely well-executed process-shots, and is a cleverly staged and wonderfully suspenseful piece of film-making—not surprisingly, given the men responsible for it. The Naked Jungle was produced by George Pal and directed by Byron Haskin, and was their mutual follow-up to The War Of The Worlds.

The task of expanding Carl Stephenson’s story to feature-film length fell to the screenwriters Ranald MacDougall and Ben Maddow – despite what The Naked Jungle’s opening credits still say – and frankly, I’m very surprised that they haven’t been fixed by now. Ben Maddow was blacklisted during the early fifties, but was allowed to keep working behind the scenes anyway (possibly because, while leftist, he never had Communist affiliations), with fellow screenwriter Philip Yordan acting as his “front”, as he does here.

Fans of Stephenson’s short story are generally (and in some respects quite justifiably) dismayed by the discovery that it has been thoroughly “Hollywoodised” in The Naked Jungle, and in the most obvious way—that is, by the shoehorning in of a romance. The arrival of Christopher Leiningen’s mail-order bride and the subsequent conflict between husband and wife are entirely the invention of MacDougall and Maddow; there is no Mrs Leiningen of any description in the short story.

However, this aspect of the film makes The Naked Jungle historically noteworthy for two interconnected reasons. As I discussed with respect to The High And The Mighty, released the same year as The Naked Jungle, by this point in the 1950s cracks were beginning to develop in the once all-powerful Production Code: the threat posed by television was making itself felt, and some film-makers responded by offering cinema audiences more “adult” fare.

Although today most of these efforts seem tentative and tame, to anyone with knowledge of the era these touches are highly significant. Thus we find long-prohibited subject matter beginning to make an appearance in films, and previously forbidden words and phrases used with increasing frequency; while one of the most important breakthroughs of all (silly as it may seem today) occurred in 1955’s Soldier Of Fortune, which resolved its love triangle via an amicable divorce, rather than by killing off the inconvenient third party.

The Naked Jungle is ultimately a transitional film. It certainly falls under the heading of “adult fare”, inasmuch as for its first hour its characters talk about little other than sex. But this film is also an example of why some screenwriters mourned the passing of the Production Code: it was so much fun working out ways to get around it.

Without a word out of turn, without any of the deliberate transgressions of the other productions I have mentioned, the screenplay of The Naked Jungle is a masterly exercise in allusion and innuendo—and as a consequence, the film is much funnier than you might expect; a quality that helps to carry it over some extremely dubious notions about “savages” and their tendency to “revert” the instant a strong white hand releases its grip.

The Naked Jungle opens in the year 1901, on a boat travelling up a faux-Amazon River (the film’s location sequences were shot in Florida), where we find Joanna Selby mightily confusing the captain by asking him what her husband is like.

The boat’s other passenger, the District Commissioner (a lovely supporting performance from William Conrad), is an appreciate witness of this scene. He reveals that he knows all about Joanna and the circumstances of her marriage, as he not only stood in for her during the proxy ceremony, but performed it. Joanna is amused, and asks him if he will be stopping at the plantation which is her destination. The Commissioner replies briefly that he cannot stop, as he has business further up-river, and then evades her questions about her as-yet unseen husband.

Joanna is unnerved by this, and even more so when, upon stepping out onto the dock attached to the plantation, she finds no-one there to meet her but a small crowd of silent, gawping “natives” (the usual all-purpose multi-ethnic Hollywood roll-call). To her relief, another native, but one wearing a spiffy white suit, pushes his way towards her and introduces himself as Incacha, “Mr Leiningen’s Number One Man”.

Incacha leads the others in an awkward, rehearsed greeting ceremony, ignoring Joanna’s attempts to ask where her husband is. Persisting, she finally establishes that he is away in the jungle, working, and allows Incacha to help her into a waiting carriage. She also manages to acquire a small boy, Mayi, with whom she has been trying to make friends, upon Incacha assuring her that his family would be, “Glad to lose boy. Make plenty.”

Joanna is carried to her husband’s incongruously large and elaborate mansion-house, which sits on a plain beyond the main plantation and is surrounded by high walls. Inside, she is introduced to the house-servants and shown to her rooms by her personal maid, Zala, whose communication skills are confined to the phrase, “Yes, ma’am” and a lot of giggling. More than a little overwhelmed, Joanna looks slowly around and, in an amusing touch, stares in some alarm at a portrait on one wall, that of an older, bearded, stern-looking, Victorian-era male.

Later, freshly bathed, Joanna is seated before her mirror in her underwear, brushing her hair, when she hears a horse’s hoofs and voices from the courtyard. She hurries from her dressing-room out onto the balcony, where she gazes nervously at the scene below. One young native is held by several others, and an older man, the local witchdoctor (played, embarrassingly enough, by Douglas Fowley in brown-face, heaven knows why), makes an angry case to a white man seated on a horse, clearly Leiningen himself, who dismisses the group with a sharp gesture and dismounts. Joanna quickly withdraws, heading back into her dressing-room.

Anything but eagerly, Leiningen walks towards the house. He is on his way past Joanna’s suite when a giggling Zala throws the door open for him and, after a moment’s hesitation, he bites the bullet and walks in, announcing himself with a terse, “Leiningen, madam.”

Personally, I think a bath first might have been in order – or at least a clean shirt – or even one buttoned to the throat – but it seems that sartorial daring is the order of the day, as it is then revealed that despite retreating to her dressing-room, Joanna has not dressed, but merely slipped over her underwear a flimsy wrapper that does not – and, indeed, cannot – close at the front. Thus she makes her first appearance before her husband.

Leiningen is, to put it mildly, a tad taken aback.

After an awkward silence, during which Leiningen is conspicuously unable to lift his eyes quite as high as a gentleman should, he offers to withdraw, but Joanna insists there is no need. Another good long stare later, however, she begins to fidget. “Leave something on me,” she pleads. “I’m getting chilly.”

Ominously, this attempt to lighten the mood provokes a declamation as to the undesirability of a sense of humour in a woman; while Joanna’s placatory response that she was just trying to be friendly brings on another about women who interrupt. Joanna is understandably dismayed, but expresses the hope that they’ll get used to one another. As she moves away and covers her nervousness by putting on a little perfume, Leiningen states baldly that she’s not at all what he expected.

Joanna: “Am I worse, or better?”
Leiningen: “Just—more. More than I expected.”

Joanna remarks that if she studies it long enough, than remark might turn out to be a compliment. This, too, has an unexpected effect on Leiningen, who recoils slightly and demands to know if she’s making fun of him? Joanna hastily apologises, but Leiningen, still very much on the defensive, observes challengingly that perhaps he’s not what she expected, either: a little dirty – uncouth – not quite a gentleman?

After a pause, they try again, but Joanna once again catches Leiningen off-guard by speaking frankly of one of the reasons for their marriage, their mutual desire for children. Something like suspicion creeping into his manner, he begins to question her. Joanna explains that she has been friends with his brother for some time and that, when he was given the task of finding a suitable wife, he asked her to help judge the answers to his advertisement. However, having read them all, Joanna decided that she was the woman for the job—although Leiningen’s brother took some convincing. As for herself, it was reading Leiningen’s own letters to his brother that made up her mind: “I could tell how lonely you were. I knew you needed me.”

This brings Leiningen out of his armchair in a shot and gets him up on his hind-legs; not to say his high horse:

Leiningen: “I don’t need anyone!”Joanna: “Not even for children?”

Driven back against the ropes, Leiningen changes the subject, trying to re-gain control by announcing that in his household, everything runs to a strict schedule.

Thoroughly trounced, Leiningen retreats. The two meet again at dinner, as the boy Mayi, looking less than happy with his new situation, works the rope that operates the large ceiling-fan, and the socially-trained Joanna tries to make small-talk. It does not go well…

Afterwards, Leiningen takes Joanna into the next room and asks her to play the piano for him. She does so, and Leiningen listens approvingly at first, but then with the air of mistrust that he showed before. He continues to test her, having her serve his coffee and asking about her talent for languages; and the more perfections she reveals, the more deeply suspicious he grows; until finally he utters one of Life’s Great Truisms:

Leiningen: “You’re very beautiful – intelligent – accomplished. There must be something wrong with you.”

After a stunned moment, Joanna starts to laugh, realising that what she took for dislike was actually intimidation. She begins a fairly astute analysis of Leiningen’s state of mind here, and in her relief says a little too much, leading a suddenly intense Leiningen to observe quietly that she knows a lot about men—and then to demand to know from what man she learned? Joanna gives him a puzzled look and replies that she was married before; didn’t his brother tell him?

No, his brother didn’t: he knew better than to do that.

Joanna, still not grasping the root of the problem, gives the brief history of her equally brief marriage to a man who was, “Very gay, very charming, and usually drunk”, and who one night went out riding, “Very gay, very charming, and very drunk.” Leiningen seizes upon this, trying to compel her say that she despised him for his weakness, but Joanna replies quietly that he was the kindest man she ever knew, and that she loved him.

She is still absorbed in her memories when Leiningen asks abruptly how many others there have been?

Joanna stares at him in disbelief, hardly able to absorb the magnitude of the insult offered, as he begins to make his objection to her plain, explaining that everything in his beautiful new house is, likewise, beautiful and new; a speech uttered through clenched teeth, which concludes with a specific example: the piano at which Joanna sits had never been played by anyone before it was brought upriver and into his house.

Upon which, Joanna rises to her feet in a rage no less profound for being quietly expressed, and utters the film’s most outrageous line of dialogue:

Joanna: “If you knew about music, you’d realise a piano is better when it’s played. This is not is very good piano.”

And with that, she turns her back on her husband and sweeps off.

So much for the wedding-night.

Subsequently, we learn the basis of Leiningen’s hang-up: that he was nineteen when he came to South America, having “no time for women” before; that his personal code would not allow him to interfere with the native women; and that now it’s fifteen years later. It’s hardly surprising that he’s feeling a little – you should pardon the expression – antsy. In the interim, in his solitude, his pride and self-will have grown ever greater, while his skin has become progressively thinner and thinner; while what started out as quirks have blossomed into full-grown neuroses.

And now here he is, alone in his beautiful new house with his beautiful, not-quite-so-new wife. What to do, what to do…

I find it remarkable, and more than a little admirable, that not only does The Naked Jungle dare to be quite explicit about its hero’s virginity (in clear defiance of the rule that states that A Man Is Not A Virgin), but then takes that next step and not only has Leiningen eventually come to terms with Joanna’s first marriage, but accept her sexual experience as a good and positive quality; as another of her many accomplishments, in fact.

But that moment is a long way off. For now, believe it or not, things between the newlyweds are about to get even worse.

The following day, Joanna wanders into what she takes to be a native ceremony—and so it is, but not the kind she thinks. Leiningen brusquely orders her away, but just to be contrary, she insists on staying. And just to be a bastard, he lets her.

The “ceremony” is the fallout from the previous day’s briefly glimpsed contretemps: the young man – whose crime, ironically enough, is adultery – is forced up onto a high platform, and must defend himself with a wooden shield from another man – presumably the injured husband – who fires poisoned darts at him from the cover of surrounding bushes. The co-transgressor is also present, held by some of the other women; we are not made privy to her subsequent fate. The young man holds off his attacker for a time, but finally he succumbs: a dart slips past his guard and buries itself in his flesh. He staggers, then plunges to the ground, dead.

As her husband gives her a maybe-next-time-you’ll-listen-to-me lecture, a sickened Joanna turns away. Unfortunately, she ends up facing Incacha, a silent spectator, and takes her feelings out on him. “You— I thought you were decent and gentle! You’re as bad as your master!”

Yes—and he’s also the dead man’s father.

Oops.

Taking advantage, Leiningen leads Joanna on a tour of that part of his plantation closest to the house: the dam that holds the river back, where the land has been claimed and cultivated; the irrigation moats; the plantation itself; the drying houses were the cocoa-beans are prepared and packed.

This is a clever sequence: what we’re actually doing here is having a tour of all the landmarks that will be critical at the climax of the film, but it never feels like that; and upon a first viewing, I doubt that anyone would realise it.

In-film, however, it’s all about Joanna learning how thin the line is between civilisation and savagery – complete with a demonstration of the favourite local past-time, head-hunting – and how in future she’d better just stay in the house.

Another awkward dinner, another bedtime to be negotiated. We reach a crisis here, the trigger something so simple as to be, I think, very psychologically acute: as Joanna withdraws, Leiningen asks her abruptly if the perfume she’s wearing is one that he bought for her, and she replies coolly that, no, it’s her own….

Left alone, Leiningen broods; more than broods. He crosses to the window and finds that, across the courtyard, Joanna is giving quite a shadow-show on her blinds as she get undressed. With an effort he tears himself away and returns to the dining-room, where it’s just him and his decanter….

An undisclosed period of time and an undisclosed volume of brandy later, Leiningen bursts violently through the doors into Joanna’s bedroom, very nearly drunk enough to get over not only the mere fact of her previous experience, but his evident terror that she might ridicule him for his inexperience. Maintaining a surface calm, a watchful Joanna tells him quietly that the door wasn’t locked, that it never had been; but Leiningen isn’t listening. He’s staring at the bottles on her dresser. “My perfume,” he mutters, picking up one bottle and sweeping the others to the floor, “isn’t it good enough for you? Have you even tried it?”

At this point Joanna tries to beat a strategic retreat, but Leiningen grabs her by one arm, swings her around and douses her in the offending scent. (This moment was, evidently, improvised by Charlton Heston, and Eleanor Parker’s shocked reaction is entirely genuine.) Then he drags her into his arms and forces kisses on her as she stands motionless and rigid, neither responding nor resisting, but with her eyes filled with contempt. This lack of reaction cools Leiningen’s brandy-fuelled ardour, and he pushes her roughly away.

After a moment, Leiningen tells Joanna that he wants her to leave – that he’ll give her money – that she’ll be compensated for her time and trouble and, ahem, other things. She tries to tell him that, from her perspective, the marriage isn’t a mistake; that she came looking for something, the strength and purpose that her first husband was lacking; but this only pushes Leiningen’s buttons and sets off another skirmish – “He was a weakling!” “So are you.” – that concludes with Leiningen telling her coldly that he is, in any event, “Too proud to take another man’s leavings.” He then stumbles into a recitation of his own history, his big secret – that he knows nothing about women, nothing whatever – which, of course, Joanna has already figured out for herself.

But leaving isn’t so easy, when boats arrive weeks apart; and before Joanna can go anywhere, two unexpected visitors arrive at the plantation by native canoe.

The Commissioner is one of them; the second, another planter called Gruber, who has come looking for two of his workers who ran away—and who he can recognise from the whip-marks on their backs. Leiningen calls his bluff, claiming that the men in question are guilty of murder and he was just about to have them hanged…and he starts to go about it, too, forcing the Commissioner to intervene and insist that the men go to trial.

After a disgusted Gruber takes his departure, the Commissioner turns apologetically to Leinengen, explaining, “I had to stop you.” Leinengen only laughs: “I was counting on it!”

It is painfully evident to the Commissioner that the marriage is not going well, and he is dismayed and mortified when he hears that Joanna is leaving. Leiningen, uncomfortable at having his dirty laundry unavoidably aired, makes a bad situation worse by insisting that she is going because she doesn’t like the country, that she finds it dull; all of which Joanna flatly contradicts before bidding the embarrassed Commissioner good-night—and goodbye.

When she has gone, the Commissioner turns on Leiningen, but his admonitions fall on deaf ears. He gives up and changes the subject, announcing that he must be on his way early in the morning, as there are hints of bad trouble in the Rio Negro basin—trouble that requires the Commissioner to utter only a single word:

“Marabunta.”

The conversation that follows is intriguingly oblique. It is never made clear what the word marabunta signifies, and I’m not sure whether American audiences of 1954 were supposed to know; though it is very evident from the film’s advertising art that international audiences were better informed.

(Paramount did use the word on their own poster too, as seen above; but its juxtapositioning with Charlton Heston and Eleanor Parker in a clinch suggests rather some sort of exotic sexual position.)

Of course, in my freaky family it was no mystery; and in fact to this day, thanks to this film, rarely do any ants appear on screen, whether in a movie or a documentary, without someone exclaiming, “Marabunta!” – whether accurately or not.

Leiningen checks that no-one is listening, and carefully closes all the doors before muttering that it’s been years… Twenty-seven, agrees the Commissioner, explaining that he hopes to heaven he’s wrong in his suspicion, but has to go and find out. Leiningen asks which way he is going and, when he hears, announces that he and Joanna will be going too. She can stop at the Baramura and catch the mail boat out.

Later, an unwontedly chastened Leiningen goes into Joanna’s bedroom – after knocking and waiting to be invited in – rather belatedly offering the hope that she’s been comfortable, and suggesting that she might call him “Christopher”, rather than “Mr Leiningen”. (Her earlier suggestion, that he call her “Joanna” rather than “madam”, passed unheeded.) Catching his softened mood, Joanna allows herself to have a little fun with him, asking him innocently if he could please fix the other set of doors to the room, which are stuck – “You’re very good at opening doors.” Leiningen gives her a look, but does as she asks.

Drawing near to her afterwards, Leiningen sighs that everything rusts here—or rots. “The jungle is corrosive. It swallows everything; even men, sometimes.” He’s no closer to saying what he came to say, though, and instead asks what she’s been reading; calling her Joanna for the first time in the process. She tells him, poetry, from his library, and instantly Leiningen’s shutters come down again.

“I don’t read much myself,” he says stiffly. “I bought all those books by weight. Eight hundred pounds of books is what I ordered.”

Pages uncut, presumably.

By this time, Joanna has no difficulty at all in interpreting this remark, and although intensely amused, she contents herself with saying drily, “Well, whoever selected them for you has very good taste.” At length she induces him to ’fess up, which leads to a quotation from Jean de la Fontaine (albeit one invented by the screenwriters), and an apology for everything in general, and tonight’s behaviour in particular: “I don’t like what’s happening to me. I tried to embarrass you. I’m not like that, usually.”

But despite this softening, a disappointed Joanna discovers that Leiningen is quite inexorable on the subject of her departure; that she will be leaving with the Commissioner and himself first thing the next morning, rather than waiting another month for the main transport boat. Leiningen also gives her a letter to take back to New Orleans, meant for his brother.

I bet that makes for interesting reading.

Leiningen wraps things up by assuring Joanna that it’s really better that they part; that it simply couldn’t work between them. “I’d never be able to get it out of my head that you loved someone before me. I don’t know how to be second. I can only be first.” To his credit, he’s clearly no longer using the word “love” purely in the euphemistic sense.

The party sets out the next morning, Leiningen commenting wryly on how attractive the river bugs will find Joanna’s full-length dress. He is proved right, but Joanna bears stoically with the bugs—and with the ankle-deep mud she has to wade through when they land to make camp for the first night.

The Commissioner tries to put in a good word for Joanna, pointing out to Leinengen how uncomplaining she is, but only prompts the growling contradiction, stubborn.

Commissioner: “Yes, a terrible fault. Fortunately, we do not suffer from it.”

Leiningen searches through Joanna’s luggage, finding a blouse, a calf-length skirt and a pair of knee-high boots, which he takes into her tent. He also offers her a native concoction to use as a bug repellent—upon which, Joanna pulls the early 19th century version of the sun-block manoeuvre, and offers him her bare back, shoulders and arms to be coated. This has exactly the desired effect upon Leiningen, and Joanna smiles to herself as she wraps around the mosquito-netting and settles down for the night.

Sometime later, Joanna wakes with a gasp. Putting on a wrap, she leaves her tent to find that Leiningen and the Commissioner are likewise restless, and for the same reason: the eerie, unnatural silence. Leiningen fires his gun into the jungle, but not a single animal cry is heard in response…

It is nearly dawn. They break camp and set out again cross-country. Their first discovery is a deserted native village, obviously left in a great hurry. Their second is a canoe, drifting towards the shore. A gesture from Leiningen orders Joanna to stay where she is, and this time she does as she’s told while her husband and the Commissioner investigate. There’s a body in the boat, or rather a skeleton. The hat lying over the skull is unmistakeable; so is the red hair; and so, for that matter, is the empty whiskey bottle.

“Gruber,” says Leiningen grimly.

This brings about yet another change of plans. Leiningen, his hand forced, confronts Joanna, asking how much courage she possesses? The Commissioner hastily intervenes, saying that they can’t take her with them; but Leiningen retorts that they must – that they can’t trust the natives of the party to stay with her and protect her. Joanna, frightened but calm, and still in the dark about the nature of the danger confronting them, asks about the boat she was supposed to be catching, only to be told that there won’t be any boat, not now.

They press on by canoe, then on foot, seeking high ground where they can have their worst fears confirmed—and do. A bewildered Joanna asks what it is, that seething mass that occupies an entire mountain-top?

“Marabunta,” replies the Commissioner. “Soldier ants. Billions and billions of them on the march. For generations they stay in their anthills, then for no reason they move, gathering others as they go, until they become a flood of destruction.”

Of necessity they turn back, and when they arrive at Leiningen’s dock it is to find a gathering of panicky natives, the drums having sent the news ahead. The Commissioner says wearily that he will have to push on immediately, to reach the telegraph. However, he reacts with shock when Leiningen offers him fresh paddlers, but makes it clear that he isn’t going anywhere: he intends to stand and fight. His departure would mean the end of any chance of civilisation in the area, and he isn’t prepared to give up—nor to surrender the land to which he has devoted so much of his life.

He then turns to Joanna and begins one more comprehensive apology, but she cuts him short. “Don’t bother. I’m staying here.” Leiningen orders her into the boat and, when she retorts with a flat no, picks her up and carries her. They don’t get very far, however.

“The Indians, you want to keep them here,” says Joanna as she is borne along. “You need them, and they’re starting to leave. If I leave, and they see me go, what about them? Will any of them stay if I go?”

At which, Leiningen stops, puts her down, and gives her a long, long look.

“Leiningen, you’re up against a monster twenty miles long and two miles wide—forty square miles of agonising death! You can’t stop it. They’re organised. They’re a trained army. They have generals, and they think. That’s the worst of it, they actually think!”

“So do I,” says Leiningen, which on the basis of his behaviour even before this moment we might be inclined to dispute.

In any case, he starts to back the Commissioner towards the canoe, ignoring the rest of his frantic protest, and his description of the horrors to come; and the last we see of him he’s disappearing up the river, still shouting, “Don’t be a fool, Leiningen!…”

That night, things begin badly with the arrival of the witchdoctor, who as we’ve already seen specialises in making bad situations worse. Leiningen addresses the other natives, making a speech that involves many impassioned gestures towards the house. A watching Joanna sidles up to Incacha, who helpfully translates, “Leiningen not afraid. Leiningen’s woman not afraid. If you want to go back to the jungle, go, or stay and be brave like Leiningen’s woman.”

Joanna moves forward to stand before the natives, who promptly desert the witchdoctor. Leiningen snaps the witchdoctor’s spear, his symbol of authority, and sees him off. As Joanna watches, she notices a fiery glow in the distance. She asks Leiningen if the natives will stay, and he replies that they will tonight, because they’re ashamed—and that they will tomorrow, because he burned their boats. Already he regrets the ruthless gesture, but the damage is done.

The next day, Leiningen and his compulsory workers start preparing for the fight, clearing the vegetation surrounding the compound and leaning down into the river, building a moat, and preparing barriers that can be set alight. Joanna and Incacha do food and water drops, and when Joanna asks if the moat can really stop the ants, Leiningen replies that they cannot swim—upon which, a gloomy Incacha points out that neither can monkeys, yet they can cross rivers.

Leiningen: “The intelligence of monkeys is more than ants, but less than man.”
Incacha: “Is so, but when ants come, monkeys run.”

Finally, the preparations are made, the lookouts posted, the workers and their families brought inside the compound—and there is nothing to do but wait. Joanna finds Leiningen studying the enemy, examining an ant in a small glass jar with a magnifying-glass.

There is an alarm from outside: one of the lookouts has reported that the ants are only ten miles away. Leiningen rides out, doing a circuit of his land and blowing up the bridges with small explosive charges in an effort to slow down the advance.

After seeing the ants for himself through binoculars, he calculates that they will be at the compound the following morning. Riding to the main dam, he gives its keeper instructions about listening for signals and releasing the water to cause a flood if necessary. The first signal, to release enough water to raise its level around the compound, comes soon enough—when the dead body of one of the workers is discovered…

And then it’s back to the waiting-game. Well—not just the waiting-game. I mean, hey, tomorrow we die, and all that…

Joanna, having reconciled her differences with the piano, is playing it quietly when Leiningen sits beside her, offering up what in the context of this film amounts to a blatant sexual overture: “You were right about that piano: it’s much better when it’s played.”

“It needs tuning,” responds Joanna, with a smile indicating that she took that remark entirely in the spirit in which it was intended. There is a little more back-and-forth, during which Joanna makes the unexpected discovery that her husband is developing something resembling a sense of humour, and then Leiningen then asks her to relieve his ignorance by teaching him about women—which, ahem, she does.

But cometh the dawn, cometh the ants; and we get some scary footage illustrating exactly what they can do. (Some of which you’ll probably recognise, as it ended up in a number of other films including Atlantis, The Lost Continent.) Among other things, they strip the leaves from trees, and use them as rafts to cross the moat. Observing this, Leiningen orders the dam to be signalled, to release more water. However, the guy left on guard there has fallen asleep…unfortunately for me.

And unfortunately for him too, I guess, as the ants creep up towards his face…

The immediate result of this is no water where it’s desperately needed, as the workers are forced to try and beat back the ants by hand: a task rather like taking on an army with a pea-shooter. Leiningen and Inchacha remount their horses and ride for the dam, where they find— Well, there’s not much left of him, actually. Leiningen orders Incacha to sound the retreat, and the workers rush for the compound, clambering over the brush barricades to get inside.

In a terrifyingly brief space of time, the land outside the compound has been stripped bare. There is a cry of alarm from the walls, where at one point the ants have penetrated the compound. Leiningen lights the brush barriers, but he knows that this will grant no more than a temporary respite.

It gives them until the next morning, however, when a shocked Joanna emerges from the bedroom to discover that everything, inside the house and out, that could have been burnt, has been burnt. “It took me fifteen years to build my paradise,” observes a philosophical Leiningen, “and three days to turn it into hell. I wanted a wife and children to hold what I’d built. Here’s my heir,” he concludes, looking down at the ant in the jar—before hurling it against a painted, framed map of his property.

“You’ve given up,” says a stunned Joanna. “No,” Leiningen corrects her, “I’ve been beaten. There’s a difference.” Here he gets around to telling her that he loves her, which, I don’t know, seems to me should have been said a couple of nights back. But perhaps he was busy.

And then, after giving Joanna the traditional handgun with a single bullet, Leiningen explains to her their one last, slender chance of victory. On the map, he points out the dam that holds back the river water from his reclaimed land, which if destroyed will result in the flooding of the whole property. Unfortunately, it’s the furthest point of the plantation.

Taking one last long look at Joanna, Leiningen loads a bag with with dynamite, smears himself with oil as protection, and sets out on foot across the Commissioner’s forty-square-mile monster…

It’s a desperate race, Leiningen against the ants determined to scale his body and find exposed flesh. At length he makes it to the dam and plunges into the water, washing himself free of ants before setting the dynamite and using a shot from a gun to light the fuse.

Then it’s just a matter of getting the hell out of there.

Leiningen turns and runs, fighting desperately to get as far away from the looming explosion and its consequences as possible, but forced by the ants to stay within the course of the river. He has not gotten far enough when the charge goes off, and is overwhelmed by a surging mixture of water, wooden debris, and ants…

(This is a horrendously dangerous-looking piece of stunt-work that brings to mind Warners’ disastrous silent production of Noah’s Ark. It’s clear that Charlton Heston did most of his own stunts for this film, but I have to assume this is not him.)

The waters race across what used to be Christopher Leiningen’s plantation, sweeping away his life’s work in a torrent of destruction before tearing towards the walls of the compound, which they begin to climb…and where they finally stop, and recede, taking the threat of the marabunta with them.

Inside, Joanna waits silently, pacing the terrace. As the waters slide back and away, she rushes towards the gates, ordering them opened, and runs out into a scene of ruin shouting, “Christopher! Christopher!”

And as she does so, a wet and battered figure drags itself to its feet and staggers towards her. She does not wait, but wades out through the mud to him. Their embrace forms a tiny island in the middle of what is now a devastated wasteland…

Well, look on the bright side: it’s going to be quite some time before they have to ask each other, “So, what do you want to do tomorrow…?”

Screenplay: Ted Sherdeman and Russell S. Hughes, based upon a story by George Worthington Yates

Synopsis: In the desert of New Mexico, Sergeant Ben Peterson (James Whitmore) and Trooper Ed Blackburn (Chris Drake) of the State Police conduct a search under the guidance of a spotter pilot (John Close). The three men are about to conclude that the report of a wandering child was mistaken when the pilot sees a little girl (Sandy Descher) some distance off the road, and directs the others to her. Peterson hurries towards the child, who is in her dressing-gown and carrying a damaged doll; she pays no attention to his calls and, when he approaches her, remains completely unresponsive. As he is carrying her back to the car, Blackburn takes another call from the pilot, who has spotted a trailer and a car a few miles away, though he could see no people. At the scene, the police officers discover that one wall of the trailer has been ripped open, while the inside is a wreck. Torn and bloody clothing lies on the floor, along with some scattered banknotes. Peterson also finds a handgun from which all six shots have been fired and, in a cupboard, a fragment of the little girl’s dressing-gown and the broken part of her doll; while outside, in the desert sand, Blackburn discovers a strange print, of no animal either man can identify. Bizarrely, the scene is scattered with spilled sugar cubes. The men call an ambulance and an evidence team to the scene: the latter dust for prints and make a plaster-cast of the mark in the sand. As the little girl is being loaded into the ambulance, an eerie, high-pitched sound sweeps across the desert. The men look around, not noticing that behind them, the little girl is sitting up, her eyes wide with terror… Peterson and Blackburn then make their way to the local general store to see if the proprietor knows the missing people or has any other information. They find instead a repetition of the trailer wreck; they also find a broken shotgun behind the counter, and a bloodied body in the storm-cellar. Sugar has again been spilled at the scene, and no money has been taken. A call is placed to the evidence team: Blackburn offers to wait for them, so that Peterson can be at the hospital when the little girl wakes up. Shortly after he departs, Blackburn hears the same eerie sound. He walks out into the falling night to investigate its source—and then screams… The people missing from the trailer – a married couple and their young son – are identified as the Ellinsons. The man was a federal agent on leave, which brings to the scene FBI agent Robert Graham (James Arness). He is just as baffled as the local officers, but offers to send the plaster cast of the strange print to Washington. The county medical officer (John Maxwell) then delivers the results of his autopsy on Gramps Johnson: not only was his body crushed and broken, but it was full of formic acid… To Graham’s bemusement, two scientists from the Department of Agriculture are sent to assist the investigation; he is even more bemused when he meets the elderly Dr Harold Medford (Edmund Gwenn) and his daughter, Dr Patricia Medford (Joan Weldon). Though his orders are to cooperate fully with the scientists, Graham becomes irritated by their secretiveness; however, they insist that their theory must be properly investigated before they tell anyone what it is. Having read all the reports and examined the evidence, the Medfords’ first stop is the hospital, where the Ellinson girl is still unresponsive. Learning that all conventional approaches have either failed or are considered inappropriate for a child, the elder Dr Medford tries holding a vial of formic acid beneath her nose. After a few moments, the child reacts violently: in a state of utter terror, she shrieks, “Them! Them!…”

Comments: Okay—we may as well get this out of the way at the outset:

The ants are a tiny bit shonky.

That’s about as close as I’m going to get to actual criticism of Them!, the first ever “big bug” cautionary tale and one of the finest, if not indeed the finest, of the 1950’s many extraordinary science-fiction films.

While we now consider that decade as the pinnacle of screen science fiction, it is a curious fact that almost all of its first genre offerings, even some of those we now consider to be “classics”, were produced independently, with the major studios strangely dilatory about competing for this new audience market. For instance, though we now think of Universal as a major player in this area, as it had been for horror in the 1930s, it wasn’t until 1953’s It Came From Outer Space that the studio got into the new genre game; while it was a relative newcomer, 20th Century Fox, that first took the plunge with 1951’s The Day The Earth Stood Still. (This, even though neither TCF nor its predecessor, Fox, had produced a single genre film during the 1930s!)

Even more strangely, it was Warners that followed 20th Century Fox into action—although, as had been the case in the 1930s, reluctantly, and with considerable doubts over the wisdom of its actions. The Warners executives didn’t really understand this new trend, beyond the salient point that the public was eating it up and paying good money to do so. The studio was still reluctant to commit significant resources, however, and so compromised by picking up for a reasonable sum an independent production which itself had been inspired by the almost absurdly profitable re-release in 1952 of King Kong. The first American monster movie of the 1950s and its first “atomic scare” film too, 1953’s The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms went to make over $5 million dollars at the box-office.

This was enough to convince even the Warners executives – mostly – who committed to producing their own science-fiction film during 1954. In fact, Them! was first conceived as a fairly prestige production, intended to be shot in colour and in 3D. (Some of the still-extant advertising art was clearly designed to promote a colour film.) The latter compelled the film’s monster ants to be constructed full size, since optical effects and 3D photography just didn’t mix (a lesson painfully and expensively learned during some earlier 3D productions). Warners did toy with the notion of hiring the man whose work on The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms had been so instrumental in that film’s success, Ray Harryhausen; but in the end handed the task over to its own studio technicians.

Almost at once, however, things began to go wrong. Jack Warner, who didn’t “get” science fiction any more than he ever “got” horror, thought a film about giant ants was frankly stupid and probably destined to fail. Cold feet set in not long after he signed off on the production of Them! The 3D shooting went first, and then the colour photography; widescreen was at first offered as a compromise, but then even this was yanked away from the production team.

The promised bells and whistles having vanished into the ether, the budget was then cut, and a rookie producer in David Weisbart assigned to oversee the project—reducing Them! to the level of a standard 50s B-film.

Or so Warners intended. Fortunately for all of us, Gordon Douglas didn’t get the memo. Despite having to stand by while the prestige production he had signed on for was lopped and cropped into a shadow of itself, Douglas lost none of his enthusiasm for the project. On the contrary—he set himself to embarrass his bosses by proving to them just how good a film about giant ants could be.

The director’s partner in crime was Ted Sherdeman, who was originally assigned as the film’s producer but became another casualty of the budget-cutting. George Worthington Yates had written the original treatment for Them!, but was unable to turn it into a workable script. When his replacement, Russell Hughes, sadly died suddenly during pre-production, Sherdeman stepped in. His completed screenplay is a lean and intelligent piece of writing, full of quiet but powerful touches whose impact is sometimes not fully felt until a second viewing. It was also he who was responsible for the story’s settings, after (as I am sure no-one will be surprised to hear) Yates’ treatment involved giant ants attacking New York.

In fact, Warners’ corner-cutting ended up having quite a number of inadvertent positive consequences. I don’t think that Them! would have worked in colour one-half as well as it does in black-and-white: Sid Hickox’s moody cinematography is one of its great strengths, contributing to both its serious tone and its growing suspense. There is some marvellous chiaroscuro here, particularly the way the light is repeatedly broken up with bars and checks; while the opening location shooting sets the tone for what is to follow. The film overall has a a terse, pseudo-documentary style which is significantly responsible for its effectiveness; the second half of it plays out almost like a police procedural, although by then the mystery is not “what?” but “where?”.

However, another contributory factor to the impact of the film is that the lower budget also meant a lack of big-name stars. Here the film really lucked out, gathering together instead character actors whose performances are low-key almost to the point of invisibility, but whose work as an ensemble is exemplary, giving at every moment the impression of real people dealing with a real crisis.

And in that, we identify the main reason that this film still works so well: it takes itself seriously without being solemn, and it never lets up. Only the very briefest of comic and romantic interludes are included, an absence not only welcome in itself, but which emphasises the magnitude of the danger confronting the characters.

Them! opens – a little jarringly, it must be said – with a solitary reminder of the film’s initial conception: against a black-and-white backdrop, the title zooms forward both in colour, red and blue, and written in a style we now recognise clearly as standard 3D format. (Rumour has it that Gordon Douglas paid for this touch out of his own pocket, as another nose-thumb at the studio.)

At once we find ourselves in the desert of New Mexico. Coincidentally, Them! and It Came From Outer Space were in production at exactly the same time during the first part of 1953 – and were released within a fortnight of one another – neither therefore copying the other but both together establishing the desert as one of the decade’s fundamental science-fiction settings.

While It Came From Outer Space probably uses the desert better (but then, the entire film is set there), these opening scenes of Them! do succeed in capturing the both stark beauty of the landscape and, more importantly in context, its enormity and sometimes frightening emptiness. Despite the overt setting, the location shooting for Them! was carried out around Palmdale in California.

A small plane crosses the sky as a State Police patrol car drives along a dirt road. The three officers are following up what seems an improbable report of a child wandering alone in the desert. Just as they are about to call off their search, the pilot does indeed spot a young girl walking alone some distance from the road. Under the pilot’s direction, the patrolmen spot her; Sergeant Ben Peterson jumps out of the car and calls to her but she pays no more attention to him than she did to the circling plane, continuing to stare straight ahead of herself as she moves in a straight and rather hurried line.

A bemused Peterson runs after her and stops her, but she remains unresponsive to both his questions and a hand waved before her blank eyes. Peterson carries her back to the car just as his partner, Trooper Ed Blackburn, is receiving another call from the pilot, who reports that he has spotted a car and trailer pulled up on the side of the road a few miles away, although no people are visible at the scene.

The two police officers go to investigate, Blackburn driving while Peterson cradles the little girl in his arm. She falls asleep, leaning back against her rescuer.

At their destination, the police officers find a scene of devastation and mystery. One side of the trailer has been completely ripped open, and the inside is wrecked. No occupants are present, but Peterson grimly observes some torn and bloody clothing and a fully discharged handgun. He also finds some banknotes scattered about, suggesting that whatever happened, the motive wasn’t robbery.

Peterson’s most disturbing discovery, however, is made within a small cupboard beneath one of the trailer’s bunks: inside he finds the missing piece of the little girl’s broken doll, and a fragment of cloth ripped from her dressing-gown. Blackburn, meanwhile, has made two other curious finds: a print in the sand outside that he cannot identify, and a scattering of sugar cubes all over the scene. The baffled police officers call an ambulance and an evidence team to the scene.

There are a couple of moments in the scene that follows that seem throwaway in context but which in fact are important in establishing two of Them!’s major themes. The first of these is Peterson’s almost-cliché inquiry about one of the newcomers’ kids, and the equally standard reply of, “There’s another on the way.” Throughout Them! we find an underlying insistence upon the value of human life, and it is to this end that children play such an unusually prominent role in the working out of its plot.

The introduction of the lost and traumatised little girl at the beginning is bookended at the film’s climax, which is built around the attempted rescue of two more threatened children; bookended likewise by Ben Peterson’s critical role in each subplot. The film is unusual and striking in its willingness to place children in danger – and worse – but this note of grim reality is counterbalanced by the adult characters’ dogged insistence that no price is too high to pay to preserve a child’s safety. (A minor character who suggests otherwise is shot down in no uncertain terms.)

The other point of importance here involves the technician whose task is to make a plaster cast of the strange print in the sand. (I say “technician”— Of course the whole team rolls up wearing suits and ties and hats and polished shoes!) When Peterson asks what he makes of it, he has no answer but a blank look and a shake of the head. This willingness to admit ignorance is unusual, and it paves the way for the introduction of the film’s real experts, who are handled by the script in a manner that is remarkably refreshing.

Having urged haste on the technician, as a sandstorm is building, Peterson looks on as the little girl is loaded into the ambulance. Suddenly, a strange, high-pitched sound sweeps across the scene from out of the surrounding desert. Peterson and the ambulance attendant look around, seeking its source—and do not see the little girl sit up behind them, her eyes wide with fear. As the sound dies away, she lies down again…

One of the unsung heroes of Them! is sound designer Francis J. Scheid, who succeeded in creating a genuinely unnerving aural signature for the film’s monsters, which is frequently used to suggest their unseen presence. This eerie sound is actually a mixture of animal calls, chiefly that of the bird-voiced tree-frog blended with those of the wood-thrush and the red-bellied woodpecker, with their speed and pitch altered.

Peterson and Blackburn then move on to the nearest habitation, the general store owned by “Gramps” Johnson—only to find a horrifying repetition of the devastation at the trailer. This time there is a body at the scene; there is also a shotgun which has almost been snapped in two, and a barrel of sugar that has been broken open. Over the spilled contents of the latter scurry a hoard of small ants…

This is a genuinely creepy scene: night is falling as the officers arrive at the scene; their search is conducted under a swinging ceiling-light that reveals and conceals the various horrors, and accompanied by the moan of desert winds. It also contains another of the film’s subtle thematic touches: the radio is playing the news as the men walk in; we don’t hear the first story clearly, but it is ominously political in tone. However, this is followed by a clearly-heard WHO report on disease eradication, introducing an important note of, “Yeah, things are bad; but we’re working to make them better.”

Sickened and confused, Peterson can only suggest that the evidence team be called in, to do what they can at the scene. Blackburn offers to wait for them, freeing Peterson to drive into town to the hospital, to be there when the little girl wakes up and, hopefully, starts talking.

Peterson receives this offer gratefully and departs. He has been gone only moments when the Blackburn hears the same high-pitched sound as earlier, near the trailer. Understandably apprehensive, the young cop unholsters his gun, switches off the lights and turns off the radio, waiting for—he doesn’t know what. He ventures out into the night—where he confronts something at which he fires his gun unavailingly…and then screams in terror and agony…

Some critics find the opening sequence of Them! to be overlong and/or too slowly paced. I couldn’t disagree more: I think it does a wonderful job in setting up the magnitude of the danger with which the characters will be confronted – even though, at the moment, we only know a relatively minor aspect of it – as well as making marvellous use of its atmospheric settings.

Furthermore, as noted, these scenes are studded with touches that throughout the film will become important themes. And we can set beside these the demise of the unfortunate Blackburn: a minor character only, but one who has already earned our respect; his death is a warning that this film won’t be wearing kid gloves in the handling of its characters.

Of course—some of the negative reaction is in the monster-movie sense of, “We know what the ‘unknown’ threat is, get on with it!” However, it should be noted that, in 1953, people by and large did not know: the film’s advertising was designed to disguise its menace – partly to increase suspense, partly because of Jack Warner’s embarrassment over giant ants – and the critics of the time mostly played ball, not giving it away in their reviews. And even though we know now, there is never a point in these early scenes where the characters’ own mystification isn’t wholly justified, or strikes us as exaggerated.

This latter point is underscored when we cut to the headquarters of the State Police, where the frustrated officers’ knowledge that they’re doing everything they can is offset by their equal awareness of the futility of “standard procedure” in a case like this. In addition, Peterson is consumed with guilt over Blackburn’s death.

There is a chilling moment here, when we learn the identity of the people from the trailer: fingerprint evidence has identified an Alan Ellinson from Chicago, holidaying, “With his wife and two children.”

Ellinson’s fingerprints are on file because he was an FBI agent; his disappearance therefore brings to the scene a representative from the local field office, Robert Graham.

James Arness was still struggling to establish himself when he was cast in Them! This was his first starring role in a film produced by a major studio after several years of bit parts and small supporting appearances. We might be inclined to feel, however, that things didn’t quite work out here as Arness may have expected, despite his overt casting as the film’s hero.

For one thing, he found himself with an in-film rival; possibly an unexpected one. James Whitmore initially found himself intimidated by Arness, who famously stood a full 2 metres tall and tended to dominate the frame without trying. To counter this, Whitmore resorted to lifts in his shoes—but he also resorted to throwing in little bits of business whenever he shared the screen with his co-star: nothing overt or out of character, perhaps just a shifting of position or a change of expression or a gesture with his hands, but all tending to draw the viewer’s eye. Knowing this in advance adds an amusing if insidious touch to watching the film because, guess what? – it worked. The still-relatively inexperienced Arness never stood a chance.

(Arness’ payoff came later: his performance here was significant in his casting in Gunsmoke.)

But it is the way the two characters were written that had the greater impact. For one thing, even if Robert Graham can be considered the film’s hero – or more correctly, even if he occupies what would normally be considered that role – he is hindered by being in addition the film’s “Ordinary Joe”, the guy who has to ask the scientists to “speak English” and to have things explained to him. Even though Graham is an FBI agent, he ends up as something of an outsider among the group of professionals who hold the story’s centre: not because of any failing on his part, but rather because for much of the film he ends up following the orders of others who better understand the situation; and while he does make an invaluable contribution in that respect, he tends to be reactive rather than taking the leading role we tend to expect.

In this respect, Peterson is an outsider and a follower too—except that we’ve already followed him through the opening sequence of the film, which highlights his quiet professionalism, but also his warmth as an individual; something seen in both his interaction with the little lost girl, which is full of genuine tenderness and concern, and his silent grief over Ed Blackburn’s fate. Because of these scenes, the audience becomes invested in Peterson as it never has a chance to do with Graham, whose late arrival on the scene leaves him at a disadvantage. The film eventually plays fair with him, though: as the ants are tracked across the country, it is Graham who takes the lead in the investigation.

Graham’s arrival almost coincides with the visit of the local medical examiner, who has come to give his autopsy report on Gramps Johnson—who could, we learn, “Could have died in any one of five ways.” Four of them are forms of massive trauma; the fifth is an enormous dose of formic acid…

(“Ah-HA!” I believe I cried out loud at this point the first time I ever saw this film, at the age of seven or eight. I was such a little nerd…)

Graham then makes the most immediate and significant impact upon the investigation of all these mysterious events by sending the plaster-cast of the strange print to Washington. This gets a response that no-one is expecting: a telegram announcing the imminent arrival of the Doctors Medford – two of them – on an army plane.

Graham and Peterson head for the airport, neither one able to guess why the Department of Agriculture is getting involved in their mystery. First off the plane is the elderly Dr Harold Medford; but it is the second Dr Medford who captures the attention of the two other men—chiefly because her rather tight skirt gets caught as she is climbing down the ladder to the tarmac, and so displays to them the lower half of an excellent pair of legs.

In one respect, the Medfords, senior and junior, are Them!’s most cliched characters: we’ve seen the elderly scientist / beautiful young companion duo in more science-fictions than we could name, even if we cared to try. What’s more, there’s a whiff here of the androgynous-name-game too: Dr Medford Jr is called Patricia; and you better believe it isn’t very long before she’s insisting, “Call me Pat!”

But this introduction is deliberately misleading, because there’s something different, and vitally important, about Patricia Medford: she isn’t just Dr Medford’s daughter; she isn’t his secretary; she isn’t his assistant. She isn’t just The Chick. On the contrary, she is a fully qualified scientist in her own right, her father’s professional colleague.

Meanwhile—though likewise there is a whiff here of that other stand-by, “the absent-minded professor”, Dr Harold Medford is tunnel-visioned rather than absent-minded: so focused upon his theory of what is happening in the desert, and what it will mean if his theory is right, that the usual niceties of human interaction are for the moment beyond him.

Though it was probably just, or predominantly, a matter of copying The Beast From 20,000 Fathom‘s casting of Cecil Kellaway as a rather cuddly older scientist, the presence of Edmund Gwenn represents something of a coup for Them! It occurs to me – and the thought delights me – than Gwenn is used here as Shimura Takashi would be in Gojira, made the same year: an established and popular character actor with strong credentials, given the task of lending credibility and gravitas to an unbelievable story. As Dr Medford Sr, Gwenn has to do most of the film’s explaining—first to the police and the FBI, then to the army and the government; but always, of course, to the audience. It is also he who is responsible for most the film’s humorous moments; but this is organic to his character, rather than something written in just to lighten the mood. On the other hand—he also gets the film’s grim closing line…

The Medfords are offered a stop at their hotel, but insist upon a trip to police headquarters instead, so that they can review all the evidence. This provokes another “Ah-HA!” moment:

Dr Medford Sr: “Tell me: in what area was the atomic bomb exploded? I mean the first one, in 1945?”Robert Graham: “It was right here, in the same general area. White Sands.”

(…although I don’t think I said “Ah-HA!” to that when I was seven or eight; and if I do so now, truthfully I think it’s less for it’s real-world implications and more for the punishing reuse as stock footage of that shot from the opening of Rocketship X-M.)

Their significant mutterings and ignoring of his questions by the Medfords soon riles Graham, who reminds them tartly that he and Peterson are assigned to the case too. Dr Harold insists that their theory must be furthered explored before they voice it, however, and to that end requests that they go to the hospital, so that he can see the Ellinson girl—

—thus setting up one of 50s science fiction’s most indelible moments.

Every time I watch Them! I’m struck all over again by the performance of young Sandy Descher, seven years old at the time—and can only admire the skill (and probably patience) of Gordon Douglas, and whoever may have helped, in getting it out of her. The little girl’s state of catatonia, particularly the lengthy moments when she doesn’t blink, is unnervingly convincing; and the only thing more so is how she comes out of it…

In fact—these days what Ms Descher’s performance puts me most in mind of is Susan Backlinie’s in Jaws: each a small but perfect contribution, without which the films that contain them would not have nearly so much of an impact.

At the hospital, Dr Harold learns from the doctor in charge of the case that none of the standard treatments have been considered appropriate for the child: she’s too young for curare for her muscle spasms, and narcosynthesis is pointless until she overcomes her aphonia. (G-Man Graham knows what “narcosynthesis” is…hmm…but needs “aphonia” explained.) The nurse concludes that a cathartic shock is the only thing that might bring her out of her state of withdrawal, and Dr Harold agrees. In fact, that’s why he’s there.

On their way to the hospital, the Medfords collected some formic acid from a drug store, and now Dr Harold pours some into a glass and moves it back and forth beneath the little girl’s nose. For a few moments there is no response. Then she moves slightly, blinking—and then screams:

“THEM! THEM! THEM!”

She leaps from her chair and dashes into a corner of the room, desperately seeking safety as she shrieks and cries in terror; and once again, it is Peterson who takes her comfortingly into his arms.

As the child sobs despairingly against the police officer’s shoulder, Dr Harold picks up his hat and suggests that the next step of their investigation should be a visit to the desert:

The threatened sandstorm is still blowing when the group arrives at the point from which the car and trailer have now been removed. Peterson shows the others where the print was found, then goes with Dr Harold when he asks to look around. This allows Graham to vent to Dr Pat about his frustration with, “That old— Your father.”

“That old man,” retorts Dr Pat, “as you started to call him—” (uh, yeah: I don’t think that is what he was about to say) “—is one of the world’s greatest myrmecologists!”

Ah, dear. Of course this is also the “Call me Pat!” scene, and of course it signals the start of a romantic attraction between Graham and Dr Pat, even though there’s no real reason why there should be one—except that such a situation was more or less obligatory at the time. However, to the film-makers’ credit the relationship is kept as lightly sketched-in and unobstrusive as possible, and never supersedes the crisis as the focus of the film’s attention. Moreover, more time passes in Them! than is overtly apparent, with mentions of “weeks” and “months” while the investigation is being conducted, making it a lot less exasperatingly perfunctory than usual.

Despite this shifting of their personal connection, Dr Pat holds to her father’s policy of silence and evades Graham’s questions. The two are interrupted by a cry from Dr Harold, who has found another print in the shelter of a small tree. He measures it, and he and Dr Pat do some rapid mental arithmetic:

(The use of the metric system is a nice touch, but there is one bit of silliness here—even if the Medfords weren’t father and daughter: Dr Harold’s habit of calling Dr Pat “Doctor”. Trust me, it isn’t scientists who insist upon being addressed by their titles…)

(And yes, I’m doing it; but then, you know why I’m doing it…)

Dr Pat obeys her father’s instruction and goes looking for more prints, while Dr Harold deduces “direction of travel” from the one they have. By this time Peterson is as exasperated as Graham, but Dr Harold continues to hold his cards close to his chest. They, he tells them rather tactlessly, are concerned with a local matter; whereas he is concerned with something incredible, which may threaten a nation-wide panic…

Meanwhile, Dr Pat’s search has led her to the base of a sandy ridge, where she kneels to smooth away the material surrounding another ominous mark in the sand. At that moment, there is a strange sound from nearby. Dr Pat looks around, trying to locate its source—but does not immediately see what is looming over her from the top of the ridge…

Well. Yes. A tiny bit shonky, it must be admitted; which the film tacitly addresses by shooting the ants either through the haze of a sandstorm or in the dark. The eyes in particular are wrong, being human-like rather than the correct compound design, which frankly would have been much more creepy. Apparently they were made that way intentionally, so that the cavity beyond could be filled with coloured liquids that would shift and change as the ants moved—back when the film was being shot in colour, of course. In black and white, the effect is rather unfortunate.

However, the main practical defect is the floppiness of the ants’ antennae—particularly because the film draws attention to them. These should have been made rigid but articulated, so that they could have been held steady or manipulated by wires. Instead they flop around in a distracting way that interferes with suspension of disbelief.

Still— The very fact that the film’s giant ants are life-sized constructs – which is to say, eight feet long – has some real benefits too; practical effects always do. The ants are consequently an immediate physical menace in a way that no optical effect could ever quite achieve, and can be made to perform physical tasks that would otherwise have been out of the question.

Dr Pat here executes one of cinema’s most forgivable scream-and-trips. (Not least because she’s still in her travel clothes, a pencil-skirt and high heels!) Fortunately, the others have heard the sound too – Peterson of course has heard it before – and come rushing to the rescue. Peterson and Graham begin shooting at the ant, but to no avail until Dr Harold shouts at them to aim at the antennae, so that the creature will be incapacitated. The two men succeed in this, and Peterson then polishes the ant off with a tommy-gun (!) from his patrol-car.

“What is it?” demands Peterson blankly; though it is doubtful whether Dr Harold’s answer – “Camponotus vicinus, one of the family of Formicidae” – leaves him any the wiser. Realising this, Dr Harold adds simply, “An ant.”

And of a rather common species, which was probably intentional. It should be said that the overall body-shape in the models is reasonably correct, although the mandibles are exaggerated—or rather, left in the extended position at all times. (Later films would likewise have their shark in a permanent feeding posture.)

Peterson and Graham express their incredulity, but the evidence is plain; Graham even notices the odour of formic acid.

One of the things at which Them! excels is what we might call the “indirect-gruesome”: it repeatedly provides enough evidence for the audience to realise for themselves what has happened without it being spelled out—like that reference to the Ellinson family consisting of mother, father and two children.

Here, Peterson speaks numbly of Ed Blackburn, the Ellinsons, and Gramps, even as Dr Harold goes into a purely biological lecture about how members of this species use their mandibles to “rend, tear and hold”, but kill by injecting formic acid with their stinger; we are left to fill in the mental images for ourselves.

Dr Harold here also joins the dots between the earlier mention of “White Sands” and the existence of this “incredible mutation”.

To the horror of the two laymen, the Medfords then speak of the necessity of finding the nest; their words underscored by another burst of what Dr Pat calls the ants’ stridulation—communication by sound (which is produced by the ants rubbing two segments of their bodies together, though the script doesn’t get into that).

Dr Harold: “We may be witnesses to a biblical prophecy come true: ‘And there shall be destruction and darkness come upon creation, and the beasts shall reign over the earth’…”

Yeah. We wish.

From here, much of Edmund Gwenn’s dialogue consists of fun – and not so fun – facts about ants and their habits. There is one lecture, when he must impress upon the government the magnitude of the danger that the giant ants represent, but for the most part what we need to know is scattered into his conversation with the others who become involved in trying to deal with the situation.

By the next day, the military is involved. Two search helicopters are sent out to find mounds that might indicate an ants’ nest—Dr Harold and Peterson in one, Dr Pat and Graham in the other. It’s Dr Pat who spots the ominous opening in the ground. As the helicopter flies closer so that she can photograph the scene, a single ant emerges from the nest intent upon tidying up: over the edge of the mound, it drops a rib-cage, which rolls down the side and lands upon an entire pile of stripped-bare bones…including unmistakably human bones. The rib-cage comes to rest next to a gun-belt and holster…

Of course the military – in the form of one General O’Brien – just wants to go in all guns blazing, or at least with a bomber squadron, and wipe the ants out. Dr Harold responds with a pitying tsk-tsk, explaining that the ants forage at night: any offensive foray must take place in the heat of the day, when the ants are below ground.

O’Brien goes along with this—not least because, “I’ve been instructed to take orders from you; give you anything you ask for”, a point I shall return to later.

But he also does it because Dr Harold has an alternative plan. They cannot risk any of the ants getting away, the scientist explains: they must find a way to drive the colony deep underground.

In proposing this plan, Dr Harold first rejects the possibility of flooding the nest, since the others tell him that an adequate water supply will be impossible; mentioning in passing that ants “breath through their sides”.

Yes. Yes, they do.

Ants of course don’t have lungs: they breathe through spiracles, openings in their exoskeleton, one pair in each segment of their bodies. The spiracles connect with a network of tracheae which permeate the entire body, getting narrower as they penetrate the various organs and tissues so that oxygen is obtained by diffusion. Though ants can open and close their spiracles, their breathing is an almost entirely passive process, driven by normal movements; there is no pumping mechanism.

Though this system works perfectly well up to a point, but it does have some consequences—the most important of which is to restrict the body-size of any insect that depends upon it, since the greater the body-mass, the less efficient the diffusion of oxygen.

Sigh.

I can tell you this, people—that day, many years ago, when I discovered that there was an actual biological reason why ants could not grow to be eight feet long and take over the world was one of the most emotionally shattering of my life.

It’s interesting, too, that Them! skips pretty quickly past this point, without any attempt to explain away the size of its mutations. Probably they felt this wasn’t general knowledge at the time. (Later films would often give their monster-insects a form of lungs.)

The general’s offsider, Major Kibbee, suggests phosphorus-bombing via bazooka, to which Dr Harold agrees; adding that the bombing must be followed up with cyanide gas-bombs: the gas will fall and penetrate even the deepest chambers of the nest.

O’Brien then asks how they will know that all of the ants are dead?

Dr Harold: “We go into the nest and find out.”

The bombing is carried out as planned; Peterson and Graham, forced to be passive while the Medfords are making their case, take an active role. (We gather here that Peterson is ex-military; from his behaviour later, Graham is too.) When the area has cooled – although not much – the two men venture to the opening in protective gear to carry out the cyanide bombing.

Once the fires have died out and the gas settled, preparations are made to venture into the nest. Graham looks up from hammering a climbing anchor into the ground—

—and sees Dr Pat striding towards him clad in fatigues and boots.

The tone of the confrontation is fascinating: Graham wants to protect her as a woman, which offends Dr Pat as a scientist. Insisting that greater issues are at stake than merely whether the ants are alive or dead, she argues that a trained observer is absolutely necessary and, as her father isn’t physically up to the task, that leaves her; impatiently waving away Graham’s suggestion that she tell him and Peterson what to look for:

Dr Pat: “There’s no time to give you a fast course in insect pathology! So let’s stop all the talk and get on with it.”

There’s an interjection here from Dr Harold that bears investigation: “I didn’t ask her to do it, she wanted to,” he says to the fuming Graham in a deprecatory tone, “and as a scientist myself, I couldn’t very well forbid her.” Is he suggesting that he should have forbidden her as a father, that he has fallen down on the job? (Leaving Graham, suggestively, to act as his proxy.) Maybe—but really we get the feeling that, rather than being what it “should” be, the relationship between the Medfords is on a different and more mutually respectful level, one without the power differential.

Anyhow— Dr Pat is right and Graham knows it, much as it sticks in his craw. The two of them and Peterson climb down into the nest, all three wearing gas-masks and carrying lamps; the men are armed with flame-throwers, while Dr Pat has her camera gear.

(We should note that in spite of the toe-to-toe, the three of them are by now “Pat”, “Bob” and “Ben”.)

The exploration of the nest is a logistically simple but effectively suspenseful sequence, with the three working their way around the dead ants and penetrating into the depths of the colony. At one point the three are startled by a scrabbling noise, and by a stream of falling dirt. They pause, on high alert—suddenly to be confronted by several ants, which break through a wall and lunge towards them. The men turn their weapons on the creatures, which die under the barrage of bullets and flame. Observing the nature of the cavity, Pat reasons that the original bombing caused a cave-in which both sealed these ants in, and protected them from the gas.

Finally the three locate what, under Dr Pat’s guidance, they’ve been looking for: the queen’s chamber. They also find what Dr Pat has been dreading, though the men do not as yet understand the significance of the torn-open egg-casings. After the scene has been thoroughly documented, Dr Pat issues a terse order for everything in the chamber to be burned.

Later studying the photographs, however, Dr Harold immediately sees the persistent danger, which Dr Pat confirms by confirming that they saw no winged ants amongst the dead, only workers.

In short—two queen ants escaped the nest before the bombing, and by now could be almost anywhere…

(Them! again plays fast and loose with biological reality here: Dr Harold multiplies up the possible distance travelled by the increased size of the ants, when of course at such a size they would not be able to fly at all. In fact, he himself observes that, ordinarily, queen ants travel on “wind and thermal currents”, rather than sustaining independent flight. A second bit of tampering is the observation that these ants have no larval stage, but hatch as adults directly from the egg. Presumably this was intended to escalate the immediacy of the threat.)

The action then shifts to Washington, where Dr Harold delivers a lecture – complete with supporting documentary footage – in order to convey the magnitude of the danger to the necessary Higher-Ups. As eye-witnesses to the incredible truth, Peterson and Graham are also present.

There’s a whiff of Woody Woodpecker about this, but in Edmund Gwenn’s soothing tones, it goes down easily enough.

The message, however, is grim:

Dr Harold: “Ants are the only creatures on Earth – other than man – who make war. They campaign; they are chronic aggressors; and they make slave labourers of the captives they don’t kill.”

Them! is an interesting outlier amongst the “cautionary tales” subset of 50s science-fiction film, in that on the whole it avoids overt politicising; and while it does have its moments, it tends to leave them open for interpretation.

Here, for instance— Dr Harold’s statement is one of simple fact; but at the same time, it is easily interpreted as a condemnation of that other “Them” that fixated America during the Cold War, and a call for a united and comprehensive response to the threat of “invasion”.

Yet to me it seems that most of the moments in this film that have a political aspect carry a negative suggestion. For example, the ruthless use of flame-throwers against “the enemy”, who are trapped in underground bunkers, is a disturbing image. The Higher-Ups agree that secrecy about “the invasion” must be maintained, and immediately clamp down on the flow of information to the news media; while their various actions is dealing with the immediate manifestations of the crisis could reasonably be called “a cover-up”. Their excuse for all this is their certainty that the result of informing the public would be, “A panic that no police force in the world could control,” as Ben Peterson puts it; and the few individuals who do gain such dangerous knowledge are made to pay a price…

In order to gain some idea of where the queen ants may have established their nest, those in charge establish an information bureau to collate any reports of “strange phenomena”, although without those doing the collation knowing why.

One particular case involves a ranch foreman from Texas called Alan Crotty, who insists that his small plane was forced down by “flying saucers shaped like ants”—and who as a consequence is being held in a psychopathic ward.

Graham and Dr Pat head for Brownsville to interview Crotty, who they find in a state of high agitation: doggedly sticking to his story, but furious about the implications of his incarceration, and even more upset about the mortifying certainty of being laughed at.

Only – as he realises, looking into the faces of his visitors – these people aren’t laughing…

But on the other hand, the fact that they believe Crotty’s story doesn’t mean that – as he assumes – they will arrange with his doctor for his release. On the contrary:

Graham: “Your government would appreciate it if you kept him here… We’ll send you a wire and tell you when he’s well.”

And we shouldn’t be laughing either…

Soon afterwards there is news of one of the two queens, which has landed on a cargo ship at sea and taken advantage of an open hatch-cover. A wire is sent to Washington even as the crew fights a desperate but unavailing battle for their lives.

(This scene contains the first ever use in a genre film of the so-called “Wilhelm scream”, which has since by overuse become a running joke.)

There are only two survivors, who are subsequently rescued by the navy; while the cargo ship is sunk with all, uh, legs. The naval vessel is then ordered to stay at sea, so that no-one can talk about what they’ve seen.

(The ship in question is named as the Milwaukee, which according to my colleague El Santo is an error on the film-makers’ part.)

Meanwhile, Graham and Peterson are in Los Angeles, investigating the theft of 40 tons of sugar from out of a goods-train—the side of which has been ripped open in an ominously familiar manner. They go to the local police station, where a suspected night-watchman is being held; and while they are interviewing him, they get their next lead. In the next room is a distraught woman, who has just identified her husband’s body. According to the coroner, the man died of shock and loss of blood; the police have not yet been able to find his arm…

The matter takes on an even greater urgency when Graham and Peterson learn that Thomas Lodge was out that morning with his two young sons, though their mother does not know where they were. Both boys are still missing…

The officers who found Lodge are questioned, but can suggest nowhere in the vicinity where a father might have taken his kids. Graham thinks to ask about arrests in the area—which leads the search to yet another hospital ward, this one containing a cheerfully rambunctious drunk who, between choruses of, “Gimme the booze!”, speaks of seeing “aeroplanes” and “ants” out of his hospital window…

Along with all its other virtues, Them! has one touch of distinct historical importance: it was the first film to make significant use of the distinctive setting offered by the drainage channels of the Los Angeles River: something which has since become an instantly identifiable cinematic landmark, and which is often found in other monster-movies, as a way of paying tribute to this one (two of the very best being Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive and Lewis Teague’s Alligator, both of which rework the underground climax of Them! for their own purposes).

An abandoned model-plane explains what the Lodge family were doing in the almost-dry channels. Gazing around, Graham and Peterson realise that, when the ants attacked, the two boys may have taken shelter in one of the many storm-sewers which open into the channel—and may still be alive.

On the other hand, if so, it is a case of the frying-pan into the fire, since the underground network of sewers offers a perfect pseudo-nest for the ants: one extending some 700 miles in total beneath the city…

There is a realisation that secrecy can no longer be maintained; but with the revelation of the truth becomes the enforcement of martial law.

(We get one of Them!’s few genuine disappointments here: the official broadcast is accompanied by various crowd scenes, amongst which – in Los Angeles! – we see precisely one person of colour…and he is a shoe-shine boy. Shame!)

A huge military force is put together, to undertake the daunting task of destroying the ants—and of finding the boys. One of those in charge thinks that both tasks cannot be successfully achieved; arguing they the boys are in all probability dead already, and that they cannot risk the ants escaping while they delay in order to search for them. “Are we supposed to jeopardise the lives of everyone in the city for two kids?” he adds impatiently.

“Why don’t you ask their mother that?” says Graham through his teeth; while Peterson adds, “Yeah, she’s right over there.”

Dr Harold has a compromise answer: that they can’t begin the full attack immediately anyway, not until they’re sure that no new queens have left the nest.

With each opening to the drain system covered by an army unit, the search is conducted by pairs of army jeeps connected by radio to each other. Within each pair, one jeep carries armed soldiers, the other an expert working a spot-light. One of the latter is Dr Pat—and guess what? – no-one says boo.

(In fact it’s she who tells Graham to, “Watch yourself.” He, meanwhile, after her display of courage and professional competence during the nest-search, has not again tried to tell her what to do.)

It is Peterson who, over both the noise of the engine and the rush of water, just catches an unusual sound. His jeep is stopped near a drain opening quite high up on a wall; he and his driver sit silent, listening to an irregular tapping sound.

The men radio to the other jeeps to halt, then consult a map. They learn that the conduit in question runs into an area still under construction. As Peterson dons a flamethrower, the driver reports to the surface command-post, asking for a check on whether there are lights at the construction site, and that they be switched on if so.

Peterson climbs up a wall ladder and crawls into the conduit. By the light of his lamp, he sees it open up into a rough, broad chamber. He calls out for the boys—and they answer him…

However, between Peterson and the boys are two ants. Seeing that, although terrified, they are temporarily safe in a narrow cavity in the far wall, Peterson shouts at the two to stay where they are, but promises them they’ll be rescued.

And then we get what is, in its unobtrusive way, perhaps my favourite moment in the whole film—at least in its implications:

Peterson (calling to his driver): “There’s two ants here, and I got a strong brood-odour—just like in the nest in New Mexico!”

Now—we didn’t hear it at the time, but Peterson could only have gotten that from Dr Pat…meaning that he has been listening to what she’s been telling them.

This may seem like a small thing, but if you’ve seen as many science-fiction films as I have, in which the powers-that-be call in the scientific experts and then pay no attention whatsoever to anything they say, you’ll know why that tiny moment makes my heart leap. That the scientist in question is a woman only makes it all the more satisfying.

Calling for troops to congregate at the nest-site, Peterson then lowers himself into the chamber, seeking an angle from which he can attack with the flamethrower without danger to the trapped children. He kills both ants, then rushes to get the boys to safety, lifting them one after the other into the opening of the conduit.

But just as he is lifting the second boy, another any charges into the chamber. Peterson stays focused on the child, pushing him into the conduit with one last effort—but in doing so, he is left without any time to defend himself. The ant’s mandibles close about his body…

This is a moment both rare and shocking: few films of this ilk succeed as well as Them! in making us care about their human characters, and fewer still contain any scene so genuinely upsetting as the heroic but cruel death of Ben Peterson.

Of course, there’s a secondary reason why we react like this, which is that it is impossible to warm up to this movie’s monsters. And this is how it should be: we’re not dealing here with a Harryhausen monster, who we want to hug and protect from the nasty humans trying to hurt it, but a relentless, faceless army. This is where the film’s insistence upon realism, a kind of realism anyway, pays off: they might cheat about the ants’ biology, but not their behaviour; there’s no attempt to infuse a personality into them, nor conversely to give them added, unnatural abilities or motives. They remain to the end simply ants.

But we shouldn’t infer from this that we are left to care about the humans just by default. We’re not: there’s some fine writing in the screenplay for Them!, and some fine acting in the film, too; and amongst a number of admirable performances, James Whitmore’s may be the best. Consequently, this is one of those rare films where I cry for the human and not the animal.

(Which is not to say I don’t flinch when the flamethrowers get going…)

The reinforcements arrive just too late to help Peterson. After killing the ant, Graham rushes to kneel by his mortality wounded friend; and with his last breath, Peterson assures him of the boys’ safety.

A violent battle then ensues between the soldiers and the in-rushing ants. Dr Harold arrives to put a stop to it, insisting that there must be no more use of explosives until the nest has been found and inspected.

As Graham leads a small squadron with guns forward, the tunnel suddenly caves in, trapping him alone on the other side of the downfall. Graham must fight off and evade more ants while the soldiers break open the obstruction. He escapes with his life but not without having his shoulder ripped open. However, the troops then break through and join the battle—and having killed or driven back the remaining ants, they find themselves on the edge of the brood-chamber. Inside, more winged queens sit ready to fly away.

Checking the scene, Dr Harold assures the others that no queens have escaped, and the final assault begins…

But humanity’s triumph – if you can call it that – is short-lived: as he looks on, Graham wonders about all the other atomic tests?

Dr Harold: “When man entered the atomic age, he opened a door into a new world. What we will eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict…”

“Don’t talk to me about ants!” Jack Warner notoriously snarled while Them! was still in production. He changed his tune once the film was released: this low-budget science-fiction drama became one of the top-grossing films of 1954 across the board, and among the top two or three released by Warners that year. In fact, some charts (according to how the figures were calculated) have it as the most profitable Warners film of 1954.

Not only did the public eat up Them!, it was generally well-received by the critics, too; and time has only enhanced its reputation. It may not be the first film you think of when the subject of the great science-fiction films of the 1950s comes up – let’s face it, the competition is pretty stiff – but it more than holds its own against the rest.

Them! is one of those films that manages to stay fresh over multiple viewings. Some of this is due to the leanness of its storyline, the absence of any diversions or padding; some to the seriousness of its execution; and some to the quietly effective acting, which puts flesh on fairly cliché character outlines. I’ve praised the main cast already, but I should mention some of those in support, too, including a few significant bit-players.

Most prominently, the unfortunate Alan Crotty (whose government has, we hope, decided that he’s “well” by now) is played by Fess Parker, a performance that won him the TV role of Davy Crockett; while the cheerful drunk is played by Olin Howlin, who four years later would find screen immortality as the first victim of The Blob.

But it is those with sharp eyes who will have the most fun here: among the supporting cast we find William Schallert as the ambulance attendant; Ann Doran as the child psychologist; Dub Taylor as the night-watchman; Dick Wessel as the railway detective; and last but definitely not least, as the army sergeant who delivers the message about Crotty’s strange experience—a baby-faced Leonard Nimoy!

As science fiction, Them! is important on two fronts. As the very first “big bug” film, it was responsible for unleashing an infestation of copyists, not one of which came within touching distance of its qualities, dumb fun though a number of them may be. Like everything else in this film, the ants were taken quite seriously by their creators, and it shows on screen. Biological reality is ignored only where it must be, making the ants a believable and tangible threat—even though the worst of what they do must be kept off-screen. (The bone-pile moment is pretty shocking, all the same.)

In that respect—we can’t help noticing here that although Pat Medford gets away with describing the crisis as, “A scientist’s dream come true”, at no point does either she or her father suggest anything less than the complete destruction of the ants. Far from “saving one for science”, they don’t even seem to want to preserve any dead specimens for later study; though I suppose there are plenty that could be retrieved from the nest in New Mexico, once the situation has been resolved. In this, Them! was again followed by Alligator, whose scientist also takes the prosaic view that the giant ’gator isn’t special, it’s just big.

But it is as an atomic-scare film that we need to stop and consider what Them! is actually saying.

In some respects it is disturbing to find, in Them!, science and the military so comfortably hand-in-glove—particularly in a film about cleaning up the atomic bomb’s mess. We might also feel that the film’s threat is, in the end, identified, contained and neutralised a little too easily—with the implication that the American military is capable of neutralising all such threats. Of course, at the time everyone may well have believed this: the lessons of Vietnam were still a decade away, and two decades away from being learned.

However— The working relationship that develops between the main characters does make a refreshing change from the science versus the military plot established by The Thing, and so frequently (and often thoughtlessly) reproduced elsewhere. And even here, Them! does things a little differently. One of the most striking things about this film that in any given situation, whoever is best qualified to deal with it is always in charge—which sometimes gives us the military taking orders from the scientists. It is taken for granted that teamwork and cooperation are the best way of dealing with the crisis, with each person’s expertise coming to the fore in turn, and everyone pitching in wherever he or she is needed. (When Graham is trapped by the collapsing tunnel, General O’Brien rushes to help with the digging). Conversely, almost startling by their absence are the power-plays, head-buttings and tantrums usually associated with this sort of subplot, as a way of creating (artificial) drama.

(Note to self: re-watch The Swarm.)

But despite the film’s humanism, despite too the comprehensive manner in which the threat is dealt with, there is as noted an ambiguous air to the film’s politics which prevents us from taking all this at face value. In particular, there are a few too many casual violations of civil rights along the way by those in authority. This is for “our own good”, of course – it always is – and to avoid the panic the Higher-Ups seem to feel is otherwise inevitable. This evident lack of faith of the government in its people is curious when set against the mutual reliance of those on the front lines. It feels as if a distinction is being drawn between those who make wars and those who fight them.

And perhaps we should consider all this in light of the fact that Them! is the first American film to really place the possible consequences of “the bomb” front and centre. Sure, just the year before, it was an atomic test that woke up The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms; but in that film, as in so many to follow, that was really just an excuse: rather like calling a scientist “mad”, once you’d said “radiation” in a film of the 1950s, you could get away with anything.

But Them! isn’t playing that game; it isn’t playing a game at all. Instead it deals explicitly with the genie out of the bottle, arguing that what started at White Sands did not simply stop at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; that such forces, once unleashed, have a tendency to take on a dangerous momentum of their own; including, perhaps, rebounding against those who set them in motion in the first place.

Screenplay: Thea von Harbou, based upon her novel and a book by Hermann Oberth

Synopsis:Aeronautics magnate Wolf Helius (Willie Fritsch) calls upon his friend, Professor Manfeldt (Klaus Pohl), to find him almost throwing a visitor to his rooms down the stairs. Manfeldt was once a respected scientist, but was rejected by his peers over his radical theories concerning space travel and the presence of gold on the moon. Though proudly refusing financial assistance from Helius, the Professor is persuaded to share a simple meal with him. Afterwards, Helius announces abruptly that he has decided to go to the moon. The Professor is almost hysterical with joy, insisting wildly that he must go too, before collapsing in tears. Helius comforts him, assuring him that he may, and adding that now, his theories will be proven correct. However, when the Professor assumes that Hans Windegger (Gustav von Wangenheim), Helius’ chief engineer, collaborator and friend, will also form part of the crew, Helius withdraws from him, saying quietly that he will not. By way of explanation, Helius hands to the Professor the invitation he has received to the engagement party of Windegger and Friede Velten (Gerda Maurus), Helius’ brilliant student—and the woman he also loves. When Helius tells the Professor that, as yet, no-one but himself knows about his decision to launch the rocket being built at his facilities, he is warned that others do know: that the man thrown out of the Professor’s apartment was trying to buy the manuscript of his space-travel theories and that, several nights before, there was an attempted break-in, apparently also with the aim of securing the document. The Professor presses his manuscript upon Helius, begging him to lock it in his safe. However, a coordinated attack upon Helius’ apartment and Helius himself robs him of all documents pertaining to his rocket and the planned launch, including the manuscript. Though his own phone has been put out of order, Helius uses a neighbour’s to call Windegger, insisting that he come at once in spite of the engagement party. Windegger is reluctant but, overhearing, Friede intervenes and tells Helius that both of them will come as soon as they can. Returning to his apartment, Helius finds a visitor waiting for him, whom he recognises as “Mr Walt Turner of Chicago” (Fritz Rasp), the man thrown out of the Professor’s rooms. Turner identifies himself as the representative of the heads of the world’s most powerful gold syndicate, who have heard of his plans and the Professor’s theories, and have no intention of allowing new supplies of gold to flood the market—or to be in the control of anyone but themselves. Turner tells Helius that his proposed trip to the moon can only happen in collaboration with the syndicate, or he will not be going at all… Hearing of the thefts, Windegger goes to check his own documents, leaving Friede and Helius alone together. Seeing that he is keeping the full truth from her, Friede presses Helius until he admits that he is intending to undertake his trip to the moon, but did not wants his plans to separate her from Windegger. Friede responds coolly that he certainly will not go without Windegger—nor without her… Meanwhile, the threats of the syndicate must be dealt with: when Helius hesitates to give in, there is an explosion at his hangars. No great harm is done – this time – but the implications are clear; and Turner is accepted as part of the crew. Work on the rocket is completed and soon, as the world looks on in awe, mankind’s first journey to the moon gets underway…

Comments:“Science fiction” is such an all-embracing term that it is often found necessary to break it up into subcategories—the most telling of which may be “hard” and “soft”. While the latter can encompass almost anything, much greater demands are placed upon the former: in essence, that a film simultaneously adhere to accepted scientific principles while telling a story that, at a minimum, relies upon a reasonable extrapolation of current knowledge. And while this framework can be applied to any branch of scientific advancement, traditionally it has most often been applied to that which to many people represents the most extreme form of human endeavour: space travel.

It is not perhaps surprising, given these criteria, that genuinely hard science-fiction films are few and far between; yet throughout the history of film – indeed, from films earliest days – there have been ventures in this area that have proven, with the benefit of hindsight, almost eerily prescient.

Probably the most famous among this subset of films is 1950’s Destination Moon, but it was not the first. That came as early as 1929, in Fritz Lang’s Frau Im Mond – Woman In The Moon – which like its American descendant painstakingly incorporates contemporary understanding of astrophysics and engineering into its depiction of the first manned flight to the moon.

Other than that, however—the two have almost nothing in common.

Destination Moon is a rare work even in this relatively limited branch of film-making in being basically nothing but hard science: there is almost nothing in its plot that does not pertain to the immediate problems of building a rocketship that will travel to the moon, and how to get home afterwards. Its characters barely have personalities, and rarely express an emotion—or talk about anything but their immediate situation.

Woman In The Moon, meanwhile, is for most of its running-time a distinctly unrealistic adventure full of melodrama and emotional angst, which plays fast and loose with science except for its famous central set-piece of a rocketship blasting off and travelling to the moon.

Nevertheless—what Woman In The Moon gets right, it gets completely right; in some respects, to an even greater degree than its more focused descendant.

That mention of the running-time of Woman In The Moon raises the first of a number of side-issues which must be addressed in dealing with this film. Like all of Fritz Lang’s silent works, this is, or was, a very long film; but also like all of Lang’s silent films, it has been roughly handled over the years, and exists in a variety of forms. This treatment is, perhaps, more understandable, if no more forgiveable, with respect to Woman In The Moon than Lang’s other efforts: what we will unavoidably think of as “the good bit” occupies almost the very centre of this film, with a full hour and a quarter of machinations and hand-wringing preceding the first appearance of Helius’ rocket.

It was when the film was released in America that this situation was dealt with most ruthlessly: its distributors simply lopped off this entire opening section, offering a 95-minute version that wasted no time getting to its launch sequence…even if it did leave its viewers confused over who exactly the characters were, what the relationships were between them, and what some of them were doing there in the first place.

To be fair to the Americans—in the early seventies, there was a West German release that ran only 91 minutes; but most countries, though they cut less savagely, nevertheless did cut; so that the original 200-minute version barely saw the light of day after its initial release, until a full restoration was undertaken in 2000.

Unfortunately the full print remains anything but readily available; and consequently, this review is based upon the Kino DVD release of 2004, which runs 169 minutes.

Though its American manifestations are no doubt better known, in the 1920s Germany was equally gripped by what was referred to, with distinctly disapproving overtones, as “rocket fever”. Even while real-life pioneers in the area of rocket design faced scoffing and resistance to their ideas, the reading public was devouring anything to do with rockets, from the wildly speculative to the purely scientific.

The era’s critical publication was, intriguingly, one of the latter: in 1923, one of those discouraged pioneers, refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer after having his doctoral dissertation rejected by his assessors, turned it into a pamphlet and published it.

The pamphlet, as the thesis had done, made four startling assertions: that it was possible to build a vessel that could (i) rise above the atmosphere; (ii) achieve escape velocity and leave the Earth’s gravitational field; (iii) carry a human crew; and (iv) travel between planetary bodies (something which the author envisioned becoming, in due course, a profitable business venture). It also described how the construction of such vessels might be undertaken, including the necessary properties of their propellants.

Hermann Oberth’s Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (“By Rocket into Planetary Space”) turned out to be a landmark work in the history of rocket design and space travel, inspiring a rising generation of scientists and mathematicians—and a rising generation of science-fiction writers. An explosion of “space-flight novels” followed the publication of Oberth’s pamphlet, most of them offering a similar plot: a visionary hero overcomes social and scientific obstacles while constructing a rocket; he and his crew travel to a planetary body (usually, though not always, the moon), facing dangers and technical difficulties both in space and on the surface; and eventually he returns to Earth, to be greeted as a hero by the public and the now-shamefaced nay-sayers.

One of those who ventured into this field of writing was Thea von Harbou, who was an established novelist before she turned her talents to screenwriting. In 1928, she published Frau im Mond (“Woman in the Moon”), which followed the template almost exactly, except for including among the rocket’s crew the eponymous woman. The novel was a success in Germany, and translated into English in 1930 – and, sadly, infantilised – as “The Girl In The Moon”. (In its most recent English-language release, the title was changed to “The Rocket To The Moon”.)

In 1929, Fritz Lang decided to transfer his wife’s space-flight novel to the screen, arguing that the central vision of space travel was both “realistic” and “romantic”. Lang himself had no interest in the technological revolution that had gripped much of Germany, and knew that in spite of von Harbou’s own reading, his film, if it was to achieve his own vision of scientific accuracy, would need a qualified advisor—and despite the recent rapid growth of this area of research, only one person seemed to fit the bill.

During the five years after the rejection of his thesis, Hermann Oberth had only become more certain of the practicality of his theories, and was busy turning his pamphlet into a book (which when finished would run over 400 pages). He had also become something of a cult figure, as well known to the public as to the scientific community. The proposal made to him by Fritz Lang appealed to him as a way of taking his ideas to an even broader audience, hopefully with the consequence of increasing funding for his work and that of others: the German government having proven obstinately resistant in this area, all research was being privately funded.

Lang, in turn, was fully alive to the possibilities for publicity inherent in attaching Oberth to his film. In fact, in the first burst of their mutual enthusiasm, the two men seem to have gotten a little carried away: early in the process, they agreed that as a way of promoting the film, Oberth would actually build and launch a test rocket.

Though in retrospect this seems like an absurd publicity stunt, it was undertaken in all seriousness, even to contracts naming Fritz Lang and the film’s production company, Ufa, as financial beneficiaries of any future projects eventuating from a successful test. Hermann Oberth certainly took it seriously—but at that point he was a theorist rather than a practical scientist, and in trying to turn his theories into realities within an impractically short timeframe he made a series of mistakes and bad decisions that saw the project stumble through failure after failure, and suffer postponement after postponement – to a time far beyond the release date of the film the rocket was supposed to promote – until, drowning in debt and stress, he abandoned his efforts altogether and fled back to his home in Transylvania.

Oberth’s frantically conducted practical research was not entirely without results, however…but that is something we shall return to a little later.

Woman In The Moon premiered in Berlin on the 15th October 1929. Audience reaction to the film’s central space-flight sequence was everything that could have been desired, being greeted with gasps and applause; while its impact upon sceptical scientific observers was still more striking, prompting a widespread reassessment of many of the associated theories.

As for the reaction to the rest of the film, it was similar to what it tends to be today: we-ee-ee-llll…

Woman In The Moon opens with a closeup of a small placard spelling out the qualifications of a Georg Manfeldt, who holds a PhD and a professorship in astronomy…but whose other professional affiliations have all been struck out. There is immediately a burst of action, as a small, rather scruffy man thrusts another, much larger individual out of his rooms and almost pushes him down the stairs. The man is saved from a rough landing by another visitor, provoking the ire of Professor Manfeldt, who insists furiously that the newcomer should have let “that skunk” break his neck.

Questioned by his visitor, whom he addresses as “Helius”, the Professor explains angrily that his unwanted caller had tried to buy from him a certain manuscript, merely as a curiosity.

Helius tries, unsuccessfully, to calm the Professor down, leading him back into his rooms. These are almost bare of furniture, although in the corner by the one tiny window sits a telescope; while over the Professor’s poor bed, a thin mattress on the floor, hangs a globe: not the usual model of the Earth, but one of the moon.

As he enters, Helius finds a visiting-card which states simply that the caller was one “Walt Turner of Chicago”, a mere glimpse of which is enough to send the Professor into another rage.

Helius unpacks a parcel on the Professor’s small table, while the Professor himself carries his single comfortable chair – a chair that, at least, would be comfortable, if it had more than three legs – from its place before the telescope into the middle of the room, propping it up again with a pile of books. (He keeps a designated pile of just the right height.)

We see that Helius has brought with him meat, butter and wine; tactfully, he asks the Professor if he can spare a little bread, so that the two of them might share a meal? This prompts another outbreak from the Professor, who draws from his pocket a banknote which, he says angrily, he found in his pocket after Helius’ last visit. Spurning what he calls Helius’ charity, he adds sardonically that if he wants bread, he can buy it with that.

Heliys must then work to overcome the Professor’s wounded pride, before he can persuade him to share what he has brought. When he finally does, the Professor wolfs down the meat and wine supplied by his friend in a manner that shows only too clearly how infrequently he has anything to eat but bread.

During the meal – in the course of which Helius as the guest occupies the rickety chair, while the Professor sits on a wooden crate – Helius gazes around at the walls of the small room, which are covered with hand-drawn renderings of the Professor’s astronomical observations and a whole series of charts, diagrams—and newspaper clippings. The camera closes in on one of these, which includes a caricature of a much-younger Manfeldt; the headline is translated for us into English:

FOOL OR SWINDLER?

We are also shown that the article is dated 1896: as the Professor remarked earlier, bitterly, he has been “suffering for his ideas” for some thirty years.

A flashback follows—and for the very first time in the history of the science-fiction film, we watch as, first with mockery and then with anger, a scientist is driven out of the scientific community for the radical nature of his ideas.

This scene stems from Thea von Harbou’s novel, and if it didn’t capture the practical reality of such moments – which, as Hermann Oberth must have known, tended to be rather more clinical: the rejection of a thesis, a refusal to publish – it may have been viewed as capturing the emotional reality.

There are many historical landmarks along the way in Woman In The Moon, and this is surely one of the most important: nothing less than the creation of one of the genre’s ur-figures, the outcast scientist, bitter and brooding, living only to prove himself right and “the fools” wrong.

Only two years after Woman In The Moon we would have another such seminal moment in James Whale’s Frankenstein: Henry Frankenstein making an impassioned plea for the wonders of intellectual curiosity before observing bitterly that, “If you talk like that, people call you crazy.” Five years more, and Boris Karloff’s Dr Laurience would be experiencing exactly what Professor Manfeldt does here, being driven out with laughter and scorn in The Man Who Changed His Mind.

Indeed, so rapidly did the makers of science-fiction films seize upon this situation – usually linking it with some idea so bat-shit insane that you can hardly blame the scientific community! – that it was soon deemed unnecessary to spell out the details. One glimpse of a scientist alone in some isolated country house or, in some cases, a castle – or if not alone, in company with some poor, put-upon assistant; hunchback optional – and the viewer would know exactly what they were in for. The radical theories and the consequent expulsion could be taken for granted.

But all this had its origins here, as we watch a much-younger Professor Manfeldt expound upon his twin-obsessions: first, that travelling to the moon in a rocketship is entirely feasible; and second, that the moon is rich with deposits of gold.

This in itself neatly sums up the weird, split-personality nature of Woman In The Moon: its mixing of hard science and silly pulp-fiction, which makes it so often a rather disconcerting experience.

As it happens, the congress to which Professor Manfeldt is presenting his theories is equally unopen to both suggestions: its members – not one of whom appears to be a day under seventy, and most of whom are rocking some serious whiskers – respond with incredulous, mocking laughter. Stung to the core of his being, Manfeldt explodes into anger, insulting his colleagues as “idiots” and “ignoramuses” and provoking an angry uproar…

…as we fade back to the present, and watch Manfeldt picking every last scrap of meat from the bones of the cooked chicken which Helius brought with him. Helius, meanwhile, is gazing long and thoughtfully at the Professor’s lunar-globe. Abruptly, he announces: “I have made up my mind to go.”

The Professor’s reaction is one of hysterical joy. “But not without me, Helius!” he cries, “Not without me!”

Reassured on this point, Manfeldt collapses in tears.

Helius’ casual announcement that he has “made up his mind” to go to the moon tends to provoke laughter, but we soon learn that not only does he mean just what he says, he has almost completed the means of doing it.

In addition to noting the many “firsts” along the way in Woman In The Moon, it is impossible not to make point-by-point comparisons with its American descendant, Destination Moon. This is one the most intriguing: like the later film’s Jim Barnes, Helius is an aeronautical magnate, the head of a company large enough, and successful enough, to undertake something as outrageous as the construction of a vessel capable of travelling to, and landing on, the moon. (Helius seems to be even better off than Barnes, who must seek supplementary funding and other resources from his fellow-magnates.)

It is interesting to ponder whether Robert Heinlein, on whose story Destination Moon was based and who worked on the screenplay, lifted the idea from Woman In The Moon, or whether it represents a kind of parallel evolution—since the power of private industry, as opposed to mere government, is one of the later film’s main themes. It may well have been the latter; and in any event, Destination Moon handles this subplot more seriously and sensibly than does Woman In The Moon.

For one thing, we get the impression here that Helius’ construction of his rocket was undertaken mostly as a theoretical exercise, just to see if it could be done: the vessel is now nearly finished, without any formal plans in place to, uh, take it for a test-drive; and it is something distinctly earthbound that finally prompts Helius to start thinking of a moon-shot in concrete terms.

The wildly joyful Manfeldt begins planning Helius’ proceedings for him, but gets no further than an assumption that Hans Windegger, his friend and chief engineer, will also form part of the crew. Brusquely, Helius rejects this suggestion—and by way of explanation, shows the Professor his invitation to a party, where the engagement between Windegger and Friede Velten is to be announced.

Yup: sorry, folks; it is indeed a love-triangle, and a particularly exasperating one.

Helius’ rejection of Windegger as a crewmember is not out of jealousy, but a rather annoying (and self-congratulatory) nobility: it is so that he and Friede will not be separated, nor Windegger placed in danger. To this end, he, Helius, has not told anyone about his plan to go to the moon, except for Manfeldt. But even as he explains this, the Professor has a moment of alarming insight, insisting that others do know: he tells Helius about an attempted break-in, which seemed aimed at securing his manuscript of astrophysical theories, which preceded the attempt of “Walt Turner” to obtain the document by purchase.

The Professor also concludes – correctly, as it turns out – that the real point of interest here is not space travel or rocketry, but his theories about gold on the moon. He presses his precious manuscript upon Helius, begging him to keep it safe. This proves a tactical error: on his way home, Helius is waylaid, drugged, and robbed of the document. Simultaneously, via an elaborate deception, Helius’ apartment is infiltrated and all his documentation relating to the planned launch stolen, as well as a scale model of his rocket; while it will later transpire that Windegger, too, has been robbed of all of his papers.

This section of Woman In The Moon is unnecessarily protracted, and blends some awkward (and rather misplaced) humour into the thriller-plot—including with respect to the introduction of the Professor’s only other friend, a mouse (called “Josephine”) who lives in the walls of his apartment. It also serves to introduce what at first seems to challenge the love-triangle as the most unwelcome aspect of the film (although it turns out not to be): the Cute Kid, a young boy called Gustav who lives near Helius, and who is obsessed with “space” and “space travel”. Gustav’s passionate consumption of American dime-fiction dealing with these subjects is one of the film’s more successful touches of comedy.

(As the last few paragraphs make quite clear, in writing her space-flight novel, Thea von Harbou left no cliché undeployed.)

The infiltration of Helius’ apartment is accomplished via a meek individual bearing a letter of recommendation from Hans Windegger. When Helius’ apologetic housekeeper explains this, he telephones Windegger to get at the truth of the matter—catching him in the middle of his engagement party. Helius then insists that, party or no, Windegger must join him immediately, so that they can discuss the developing crisis. Windegger, however, hesitates—and it is Friede who assures Helius that both of them will come at once.

As an ambivalent Helius ponders an encounter with Friede, whom he has been avoiding, he is suddenly confronted by the man he saw being thrown out of the Professor’s rooms…

This formal introduction of “Mr Walt Turner of Chicago” is one of the film’s more unnerving moments. In the first place, contemporary German audiences would have recognised him instantly as the film’s villain, because Turner is played by Fritz Rasp, who rarely played anything else. Next, the camera pans down to rest upon his spats—which would have told viewers that, whether or not his name really was Walt Turner, he was American (and possibly from Chicago).

But neither of these details is what will rivet the attention of modern viewers, but rather the character’s unmistakably Hitler-ian hairstyle.

Of course, we say that now; the intriguing question is whether people would have said so then…and if so, what Thea von Harbou thought about it.

Though they had at the time of this film’s production been married for a decade, the personal relationship between Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou had essentially gone bung after only about a year, even as their professional collaboration went from strength to strength: foundering equally on his serial infidelities and her increasingly ring-wing politics.

It suited them both to stick it out, however—at least until the Nazis’ rise to power, at which point Fritz Lang responded to an offer from Joseph Goebbels to head up the new, Nazi-fied national film industry by fleeing both his country and his wife. He never looked back, and he and von Harbou never met again.

(Some reassessment of von Harbou has suggested that for her, it was less about politics and more about a fixation with charismatic leaders able to sway multitudes: she was as devoted to Gandhi as to Hitler.)

Turner’s first move, after introducing himself, is to take out a key and let Helius into his own apartment. Perhaps the film’s most genuinely startling moment follows, as Turner confirms that he was the meek-looking individual with the fake letter of introduction: he illustrates his words with one of the production’s few special effects unconnected with the space-flight, apparently rearranging his own face and then putting it back again.

“Now I understand how you have evaded prison so long, Mr Turner,” observes Helius, to which Turner responds, equally wryly, “You flatter me!”

This overly-extended fencing finally – thankfully – settles down into a revelation of what, exactly, Turner and the people he represents are after…which is, naturally, those mountains of gold that, some thirty years before, Professor Manfeldt assured a mocking world were to be found on the moon.

Three years before Woman In The Moon, Fritz Lang was savagely berated by the critics for the “political naivety” of Metropolis. Apparently he took it to heart, because in this, his next science-fiction venture, he offers instead a deeply cynical scenario of worldwide, endemic corruption—and of the helplessness of the idealist in the grip of capitalist self-interest.

In short, the people behind Turner are an international syndicate – its members billed in the credits as “the brains and chequebooks” – who between them control the world’s gold, and who have no intention of allowing this new source of the metal to flood their market.

While this subplot is not without its amusing side, Woman In The Moon devotes way too much time to it without ever working out the details. We’re left to infer (from Turner being forced on Helius as another crewmember) that the syndicate wants possession of the gold—and not just to prevent others possessing it, although that’s actually what they say. But how exactly do they plan to go about getting it? The film never really tries to answer this question. The conspirators could certainly stop Helius from getting to the moon at all, as they make ominously clear to him, but the idea of them forcing him to pack-mule mountains of gold from the moon to Earth for them is just ridiculous.

(No more ridiculous than there being mountains of gold in the first place, granted…)

Be that as it may— This is the first point in the film where its science really makes itself felt, as we cut away to the members of the gold syndicate – one of whom is Japanese, another a cigar-chomping woman – as they examine the stolen documents and the model rocket. One of the five holds up a photograph of the lunar surface, exclaiming excitedly about its contents: its shows a bright magnesium flash, proof that Helius’ unmanned trial rocket reached the lunar surface and exploded upon impact. (A note reveals that the flash was observed and photographed at the Mt Wilson Observatory.) Furthermore, stolen film contains details of the design and launch of the trial rocket, and images of the surface transmitted during its orbit, including from the never-before-seen dark side.

There is a thrill associated with this part of the film infinitely more profound than any provoked by its actual thriller-plot; while the sudden switch from the pulpy machinations of the film’s bad guys to absolutely straight science is quite jolting.

At the same time, in pursuing the cutting-edge of contemporary knowledge, Woman In The Moon illustrates just how far off the mark were some of the prevailing theories—and if we recognise that these were real theories, it makes the gold-plot a little less silly. As the camera pans past the lunar surface, intertitles quote real-life scientists including the Danish-born German astronomer, Peter Andreas Hansen, of the Gotha Observatory in Germany, who believed that there was “atmosphere and therefore life” on the dark side of the moon, and the American William Henry Pickering, of the Mandeville Observatory in Jamaica, who interpreted the haze observed within some of the moon’s craters as swarms of insects.

As the film concludes, the wheelchair-bound member of the syndicate makes clear their position:

“The moon’s riches of gold, should they exist, ought to be placed in the hands of businessmen and not into those of visionaries and idealists!”

…or to put it another way, scientists.

We then cut back to Turner delivering the syndicate’s ultimatum to Helius: that the journey to the moon will be made under their command, or it won’t be made at all. Then, from insisting that Helius give in at once, under threat of his hangar and the rocket within being destroyed, Turner concedes him twenty-four hours to make up his mind.

Intriguingly, in his first passionate rejection of Turner’s threat, Helius speaks of colonising the moon, a point never raised again.

Windegger and Friede turn up hard on the heels of Turner’s departure, and Helius tells them about the thefts; that and no more. Impetuously, Windegger runs off to see whether Friede’s guess is correct, and he too has been cleaned out—leaving Helius alone with Friede for the first time since the announcement of her engagement.

Ultimately, the character of Friede and the way that Gerda Maurus is used in Woman In the Moon may be the film’s biggest letdown. The most immediate aspect of this is also the most obvious: though Friede is presented as a “brilliant student”, and though she has presumably been involved both in the designing of the rocket and the planning for its (theoretical) journey, in-film we never see her doing any science.

This is not, however, an example of a familiar science-fiction film shortcoming, but a deliberate choice on the part of Thea von Harbou. Friede is not here to be a scientist, but a symbol: an inspiration to the men in an immediate sense, and more broadly the embodiment of the spirit of human enterprise, always striving, always yearning… There’s no subtlety at all in this aspect of the film, which finds Friede spending most of her time clasping her hands on her breast, or putting them together prayer-fashion, and gazing heavenward, like some sort of astronomical Joan of Arc.

This is tiresome enough in itself, but there is a creepy aspect to it too, at least with hindsight; Friede in her entirety looks unnervingly like one of the heroines of the so-called “mountain films” so popular in Germany in the 20s and 30s, a number of them made by and starring Leni Riefenstahl. This peculiarly German artform – regarded by some as the German equivalent of the American western – is often interpreted allegorically, as an expression of the spirit and of the supremacy of the human will…even its (ahem) triumph…

As with Friede’s posturing, this was clearly a conscious choice by von Harbou—for whom, perhaps, merely climbing mountains without any safety gear wasn’t a strong enough expression of character: her model Germans would climb to the moon.

And there is a third, far more prosaic level, upon which Friede ultimately disappoints. Woman In The Moon reunited Gerda Maurus and Willy Fritsch after their co-casting the previous year in Lang’s espionage romp, Spione (Spies). In that film, their relationship is unconventional and a great deal of fun, and Maurus is allowed to be a proper action-girl; here, Maurus and Fritsch are simply two points of an all-too-conventional – and irritatingly mopey – triangle.

It is clear from the outset that Friede was initially drawn to Helius, but then drifted towards Windegger when he didn’t notice; while he, in turn, probably being too caught up in his work, didn’t realise his own feelings until the announcement of the engagement. Friede will spend the rest of the film zig-zagging between the two men, according to whichever of them seems to need her more at that time—and just to add the final dollop of icky to the situation, her attitude towards both comes with overtones that are unmistakably maternal in nature. Though Windegger does get in a couple of early kisses (speaking of icky), more commonly we find Friede cradling one man or the other in her arms and holding his head or stroking his hair to comfort him in a moment of crisis.

After they have been alone together for few tense minutes, Friede asks Helius abruptly why he didn’t reveal to her and Windegger his intention of going to the moon? After some evasions, Helius admits that he wanted to avoid forcing Windegger to choose between love and duty. To this, Friede responds simply that he will certainly not be going to the moon without Windegger…nor, for that matter, without her.

Tempora mutantur. This is the one interesting touch in the tiresome triangle-plot. Helius almost explodes at the suggestion that Friede might form part of the crew, insisting categorically that she cannot be permitted to take such risks and put herself in such danger (we learn at this point of several brave pioneers who have already lost their lives in failed ventures into space), that he could not stand it; whereas Windegger – although he puts in terms of her wanting to go with him, rather than her going in her own right – is, after the first moment of shock, delighted. We are clearly supposed to deduce from this that Helius loves her more…but what the modern viewer sees here is Windegger treating Friede as an equal and allowing her to make her own decisions. In fact, Windegger is never more likeable than at this moment, nor is the engagement ever more explicable.

Helius finally explains to the others about his position with the syndicate…but nevertheless lets the twenty-four hour deadline drift by without responding to the ultimatum. Word then reaches him of an explosion and fire in one of his hangars: there is only property damage, and no loss of life…this time, says Turner. And Helius capitulates…

And it is at this point, 76 minutes into Woman In The Moon (and 6000 words into this review, eep!), that the film’s celebrated set-piece unfolds: the completed rocketship – which, by the way, is called the Friede, translated for us as “peace” – emerges from its hangar and is prepared for its journey to the moon as an astonished world looks on.

This really is a marvellous sequence, generally succeeding in evoking the intended sense of awe in spite of some fairly obvious model-work. However, as always, the black-and-white photography helps here, and any flaws are more than offset by the evident excitement and belief of the people behind the scenes in its creation.

We are in a position today to recognise what viewers in 1929 could not, the prescient accuracy of the majority of this material. First and foremost – getting correct what is the most significant error in Destination Moon – Helius’ rocket is multi-stage: the jettisoning of the first stage and the firing of the second are made an important aspect of the extended launch / escape sequence. The rocket has been constructed within an enormous hangar; it is moved out to its launch-pad via a massive platform on sliding railings, and eventually positioned within a buffering water-pool; it operates on a specially-designed liquid fuel. Inside, there are both dangling hand-straps and loops inserted in the floors, into which the toes may be slipped. During take-off, the crewmembers battle the G-forces while lying horizontally in bunks.

Furthermore—the last moments before launch are accompanied by a countdown. It is generally conceded that this procedure, which we now take for granted, was invented by the makers of Woman In The Moon.

But even while they go toe-to-toe in their efforts for scientific accuracy, what is really striking here is how completely different are the tones and approaches of Woman In The Moon and Destination Moon, in handling essentially the same material.

The first really significant difference here is that never at any point in the presentation of its scientific content does Woman In The Moon talk down to its audience. There’s no Woody Woodpecker here, and – more importantly – no Joe Sweeney. For the most part, Woman In The Moon simply presents its concepts in a straightforward manner, and clearly expects that the average viewer will grasp them, if not entirely, then sufficiently to follow what’s going on. This may reflect the extent to which Germany really was gripped by “rocket fever”. To be fair to Destination Moon, though, it does explain its science in more detail.

Moreover, in stark contrast to the rather paranoid political atmosphere and air of secrecy that pervades the later film, reflective of Cold War America, here we have optimism and openness. Everyone is thrilled and excited about the prospective launch, with no hint of disapproval or interference from either government or enemies, foreign or domestic. Huge crowds gather to witness the launch (some enterprising soul seems to have sold tickets!), cheering wildly as the hangar-doors open and the rocketship begins its stately journey to the launch-area. Those in attendance even attempt to storm the barriers, and have to be held back by police, with some women becoming hysterical. Photographers and newsreel cameramen swarm all over the site, capturing every detail for posterity. A radio broadcaster describes vividly every moment to a listening world. We learn from him that at the moment of lift-off, “Bells will be rung, sirens of all factories, trains and ships all over the world will sound in honour of the pioneers of space navigation!”

Mind you…on the rocketship, things aren’t quite so chipper.

The final crew consists only of those whom we have learned to expect, with one addition: Helius, Windegger, Friede, Turner, and Professor Manfeldt…who has brought along his mouse. (There is lots of lecturing here about the anticipated pressure on the human body, but that is NOT what I was concerned about!)

As they make their final preparations, Helius again stresses the dangers for the benefit of Turner and Manfeldt. As a sign of professional respect, he refrains from offering the same warnings to Windegger and Friede…or at least, he tries to: he can’t stop himself from begging Friede one last time not to do this, to leave before it is too late, and is only halted by her asking if he really intends to shame her like that?

In fact—Friede is full of beans. She spends her final moments on terra firma shaking hands with the project’s many workmen (I was reminded here of the Countess Sonia’s comradely relationship with her brother’s workers in The Mysterious Island, also 1929), then climbs briskly up the rope-ladder to the boarding-platform; pausing in the doorway to pose for one last photograph and one final wave goodbye. Once inside, she shows no sign of apprehension until the very moment of lift-off.

The same cannot be said, however, for Windegger.

This is something which rapidly became a cliché of the space-flight film, but it too had its origins here: you could always tell how an individual character was going to fare during any given film by how they conducted themselves during lift-off; and heaven help anyone whose lip quivered while waiting for that decisive moment, or who lost their subsequent battle with the G-forces too quickly.

This is the point in Woman In The Moon at which the love-triangle readjusts itself. Helius, all angst and outbursts in the early stages, becomes Mr Cool once actually in command of his rocketship; while Windegger, wildly enthusiastic about the journey in theory, is reduced to a sweaty mess once its dangers become real to him.

The film’s one egregious error occurs during the take-off sequence, during which the rocketship both lifts off and then accelerates with absurd rapidity. This is accompanied by its silliest artistic choice: the rocket’s controls are on a panel in the middle of the floor, between the bunks occupied by Helius and Windegger—rather than, say, over their individual bunks. The two men are therefore required to lean awkwardly across, fighting the G-forces all the way, in order to eject the first stage, ignite and then eject the second, and eventually bring the ship out of acceleration.

It is perhaps needless to say that Windegger fails dismally at his assigned tasks, passing out first of all the crew with the G-forces (they all go eventually) and leaving Helius to carry out both his own tasks and his engineer’s…which he completes just in the nick of time, not much to our astonishment.

Now—when I called the over-acceleration Woman In The Moon’s one egregious error, I meant its one unintentional error. From this point the film junks its scientific accuracy and reverts back into a pulpy adventure-story, full of things that everyone knew even at the time just weren’t true, like an enveloping breathable atmosphere on the moon, no real difference in gravity (everyone wears weights on their shoes, but are not otherwise affected), an ordinary night-day cycle rather than a fortnightly one, plenty of water (which must be found, if you please, with a divining-rod)—and, yes, there are huge deposits of gold. The bad-guy machinations that dominated the opening section of the film also re-emerge and take over the plot.

Ah, well. It was fun while it lasted.

All the crewmembers eventually come round (yes, including the mouse!), and there is a celebration that demonstrates the superiority of German space-films to American ones, in that they reach not for sandwiches and a harmonica, but brandy. Friede goes to pour out—and in doing so helps to demonstrate Thea von Harbou’s completist tendencies: yet another cliché-box is ticked with the revelation of a stowaway (few German space-stories were without one). It’s Gustav, the space-obsessed kid from Helius’ neighbourhood.

(Hereafter, he, Helius and Friede are repeatedly framed together, like a surrogate family.)

The rest of the journey also hits the familiar marks, with the crew gazing in awe first at the receding Earth, and then at the approaching moon; having fun with weightlessness; and struggling with a landing that goes wrong, and which is further complicated by both Windegger’s growing funk – he does nothing from this point on but throw petulant tantrums – and the Professor’s growing hysteria.

Disturbingly, there is a suggestion here that the Professor wants the ship to crash, as a sort of all-embracing consummation of his life’s work. While, in films using this subplot, the outcast scientist usually does come to grief while pursuing his vindication / revenge, having a few screws work loose in the process, few of them have ever handled the mental-health consequences of exile and ridicule as straightforwardly as this one. Already in a parlous condition when the adventurers set out, the fulfillment of the Professor’s dreams brings him to state of combined exaltation and selfish ruthlessness in which he is quite prepared to risk his companions’ lives. While Windegger spends the journey clinging desperately to thoughts of Earth, the Professor’s gestures indicate an angry rejection of that scornful globe, and a dangerous desire to embrace the moon on a permanent basis.

As the rocketship approaches its destination, Helius and Windegger cannot pull it out of its rapid descent: it over-speeds down as it over-sped up, finally plunging deep into the powdery lunar surface – which saves the life of everyone on board – and sustaining damage requiring repairs if they are to have any hope of taking off again. (Although this latter point is treated as only a temporary inconvenience.)

Windegger’s only thought, once arrived, is to get the hell out of there: he is morbidly thrilled to discover that one of the water tanks is damaged, arguing that this means they cannot stay. The Professor, meanwhile, terrified that Windegger might convince Helius that they need to leave at once, or (as he threatens) try to leave by force, ignores all orders and protocol by rushing into a spacesuit and exiting the ship—and so achieving his life’s dream of walking upon the moon.

He also solves the question of a breathable atmosphere, by striking a series of matches and then discarding his helmet.

From the main cabin, Helius watches in dismay through his binoculars as the Professor recedes into the distance, apparently being dragged up and over the dusty hills of the moon by the divining-rod.

An argument then breaks out amongst the others about the best order in which to undertake their various tasks, which Turner unexpectedly solves by offering to go and search for the Professor—and hopefully finding some water, too. He sets out, following the trail of footprints.

Meanwhile, Gustav is helping Helius to write up the log (the latter injured his hand during the landing); a sulky Windegger works at removing the piles of moon-dust from the lower levels of the rocket; and Friede sets up a camera and begins filming the lunar environment.

This is the only moment in the film in which Friede does something sciencey, so, enjoy!

There is a fraught moment when Friede subsequently discovers and treats Helius’ injury: a tear falling upon his hand alerts him to the altered state of her feelings, but after an involuntary, betraying response the latter tears himself away from her and announces that he, too, is going to go looking for the Professor, who has now been missing some hours.

As it happens, the Professor is at just that moment fulfilling the second great wish of his life. The divining-rod leads him into a cave full of bubbling springs (although not hot-springs, by the way everyone wades through them), and then through it into a chamber which is indeed full of the deposits of gold which he predicted. After shrieking aloud in triumph, the Professor clasps in his arms an almost man-sized stalagmite of gold, kissing and caressing it as if it were indeed a person. (It actually looks a little…reptilian; even dinosaury. Hmm…)

Now— Turner is not of course remotely interested in either water or the Professor per se, and unfortunately he arrives on the scene just in time to hear the magic word “GOLD” echoing through the cavern. Observing him, the Professor screams in fury, wrenching his metallic love-object away from its surrounding rocks and fleeing with it into an adjoining chamber. (This may be another nod at low gravity, or just sloppiness.) Turner pursues him and, as he backs away, the Professor does not notice the crevice behind him. He plunges to his death, broken by the jagged rocks below and crushed by his pillar of gold…

Only momentarily disconcerted, Turner collects a few samples of the abundant gold and heads out. Catching sight of the searching Helius and Gustav, he dodges behind some rocks to avoid them, and leaves them to make the grim discovery for themselves.

The silliest part of the film then unfolds, or maybe just the least explicated—with Turner apparently trying to steal the rocket. We can only assume that he thinks he has gleaned sufficient knowledge from the stolen material to get back to Earth on his own. Otherwise, his various attempts to abandon and/or murder the crew seem just a tad counterintuitive…

Nevertheless—this section of the film does offer the moment that, science and space-flight notwithstanding, I always remembered most vividly from my first viewing of the cut-down American version, lo, these many years ago. (It’s the only moment in Woman In The Moon where I could recognise the Gerda Maurus I knew from Spies.)

While Turner is overpowering and trussing up Windegger, Friede is developing her films in a makeshift darkroom. When Windegger does not respond to her calls, she goes out looking for him, with Turner holding his captive silent in the hope that Friede will wander far enough away from the ship for him to commandeer it and lock the others out.

However, when Turner releases Windegger to make a dash for it, the other shrieks a warning, initiating a race to occupy the ship. Friede gets there first, but then faces a desperate struggle to hold Turner out of the cabin—one which she ultimately “wins” by using her own arm as a locking bar, despite the agony inflicted by Turner’s wrenching efforts to get the door open.

Helius’ arrival puts an end to her torment. A furious hand-to-hand fight begins between the two men. At the same time, Gustav manages to untie Windegger’s arms. Thrown free from Helius, Turner draws a gun—only for Windegger to produce one as well. There is an exchange of shots, one wild, one on the mark—

—and it’s Turner who bites the dust, literally. Weirdly, he gets a drawn-out, ain’t-it-sad death-scene (which is certainly more than the Professor got!); but our surrogate family’s solemn overseeing of his last moments is rudely interrupted by an hysterical Windegger, who has discovered that Turner’s wild shot has damaged the rocket’s oxygen tanks—meaning that, even though the crew now only numbers four – or even three-and-a-half – if the others are to make it back to Earth, someone will have to stay behind…

Bet you didn’t see THAT coming.

With Friede and Gustave ruled out of the running, it boils down to a two-out-of-three short-stick draw between Helius and Windegger—and the latter gets the worst of it.

A base-camp is constructed on the surface some distance away, with a tent erected and anything that could remotely be of use offloaded from the ship. Fortunately, it seems like they initially planned to stay for some time. (When they say the rocket has a cargo hold, they ain’t kidding!) Meanwhile, Windegger is not taking his situation well, to put it mildly. Finally, Friede offers to stay with him—but he is so wrapped up in his misery, he doesn’t even hear her.

Helius does, however. He is pouring three drinks, with which they can share a last toast—and into two of them he slips a sedative. Windegger chugs his, but after one taste of hers Friede glances suspiciously at Helius. Nevertheless, she is soon retiring to her sleeping-quarters complaining of headache, even as Windegger collapses where he is.

Left alone with Gustav, Helius must put the weight of the situation on him. He explains to the boy the initial take-off procedures, making him run through the routine until he is perfect, and promises him that Windegger will wake up in plenty of time to take command for the rest of the journey.

Helius leaves a note for Windegger, in which he expresses his confidence that he will come back for him as soon as he can. He wants desperately to take one last look at Friede, but resists temptation and turns away from her door. The parting with the tearful Gustav is difficult, but the boy promises valiantly that he will carry out his duties. (This is one of several moments in Woman In The Moon where they assume the science to be understood: there’s no explanation of why Gustav will have no pressure-troubles lifting off from the moon.)

Helius then exits the ship, leaving Gustav to seal up the vessel. He retreats to a safe distance, counting down on his watch—and lifting his head to watch his rocketship blast away from the surface of the moon.

Alone – as alone as any man has ever been – Helius turns towards his base-camp…

…where he has a surprise waiting for him.

I’m not sure how we’re supposed to take the ending of Woman In The Moon. It’s certainly startling, whatever we conclude: so few films have the nerve to leave their protagonists’ fate unresolved.

Of course, technically Destination Moonalso leaves its characters’ fate undecided, in that it closes with them still in space. However, that film’s can-do attitude leaves no room for doubt that the men will make it safely back to Earth. Here, not so much.

It is interesting to note the range of interpretations provoked by this ambiguous close over the years, from the optimistic to the uncertain to the doom-ridden to the political.

In this context it is worth remembering that Woman In The Moon has had half-a-dozen different scores imposed upon it since its first release, and the accompanying music certainly influences how we view its final scenes. The Kino version comes with a new score composed by the remarkable Jon Mirsalis, which gives the ending a distinctly elegiac feel…but who knows? – perhaps the original score suggested a hopeful and even triumphant moment.

But—I don’t really think so; not if the fate of Helius and Friede rests upon the efforts of Hans Windegger.

The note that Helius leaves contains a frank demand for quid pro quo, but let’s be realistic: not only does Windegger evince a state of terror throughout the entire space journey and his time on the moon, thinking of nothing but getting back to Earth again, but his interactions with Helius and Friede are punctuated (not unjustifiably) with outbursts of jealous rage. And given that he is yet to wake to the realisation that Friede preferred to stay behind with Helius rather than travel home with him—well, I’m not seeing much that promises an altruistic response from him.

What’s more, I don’t believe Windegger ever learns that the Professor was correct about the gold on the moon, so we can’t even find hope in his self-interest.

Actually, now that I come to think about it—I don’t think I’d care to be in Gustav’s shoes, once Windegger does wake up…

Woman In The Moon went on to become the highest-grossing film of the 1929 / 1930 German production season: an enthusiastic public response that we must set beside the critical response, which was universally negative. There were various reasons for the latter, including the frankly political. By this time Ufa was owned by Alfred Hugenberg, a far right-wing media mogul who at this time was openly supporting the rising National Socialist party, and was perceived (and to a large extent, correctly) as using his film company as a propaganda machine.

More leftist reviewers of Woman In The Moon were not slow to read within it an alarming allegory (Aryans conquering new worlds, rather than dying on dead ones; what was the original intent of the ending!?); von Harbou was pilloried for her politics, and Lang for doing deals with the devil in order to get his films funded (the distinction was almost invariably made).

In fact, it can hard to appreciate in hindsight just how widely unpopular the Lang / von Harbou partnership was at the time: they were seen as the public face of reactionary forces, having their strings pulled from behind a curtain.

But while we must of course consider the political climate of the time, it is perhaps a more relevant fact that Lang and von Harbou were also unpopular simply as film-makers. Here too von Harbou took the brunt of it: even aside from her politics, she was perceived as simplistic and derivative in her writing; many critics derided her as a drag upon Lang, from which he would not or could not free himself, preventing him from achieving true artistry.

Yet some critics of the time were just as dismissive of Lang himself, condemning him as old-fashioned and out of step with international developments in film-making. (One wonders how they would have reacted to the knowledge that Lang would go on to a twenty-year-long secondary career in Hollywood.) And of course, given that this was 1929, in one important sense Lang certainly was “old-fashioned”: sound was on its way, and at a rate of knots; and Woman In The Moon would be the director’s last silent film.

Another common criticism of Lang is that his films were just “sound and fury”, and in the case of Woman In The Moon it is hard to argue. The film’s many flaws are almost thrust into our faces: it is over-long, with many of its scenes unnecessarily drawn out; much of its plot is frankly silly; and in order to go along with what Lang, or von Harbou, or both, seem to have considered its BIG themes, Lang ordered BIG acting: silent-movie gesticulation of the broadest and most tiresome kind, which persists throughout.

(The only subtle moment in the entire film is when Friede suspects her drink has been drugged: Lang foregrounds Windegger’s exaggerated agonies, so that it is possible to miss altogether her quick look at Helius.)

Even the central set-piece didn’t please everyone. While some critics embraced it as film-making, as a realisation of the technological cutting-edge and as an expression of human possibilities, others sniffily dismissed it as “juvenile fantasy”, or complained about the model-work. Amusingly, some of the latter also complained about the film’s “boring” moonscapes, demanding something out of Verne or Wells instead. This is actually another of the film’s points of accuracy, although with a certain measure of artistic license for plot-purposes.

But if in public people were in two minds about Woman In The Moon, behind the scenes it was a very different matter.

The film, as I remarked earlier, sparked a serious reconsideration of the theories of rocketry which it champions. It also provoked a new burst of activity on the part of the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (“Society for Space Travel”), an amateur organisation that spent every cent it could raise on experimental rockets, and which by 1930 had achieved the first successful test-firing with liquid fuel. Among its members at this time were Willy Ley, who had also consulted on Woman In The Moon, Wernher von Braun—and Hermann Oberth, who was president of the organisation.

Oberth emerged from his self-imposed seclusion in 1930, in order to take up again the practical side of his work, which the time-pressures associated with the “publicity stunt” had driven to embarrassing though ultimately very informative failure. So enthusiastic did these amateurs become about their rapid progress at this time that they began petitioning the government for money. Such funding was permissible, since when the otherwise punitive Treaty of Versailles was laying out its restrictions upon military development in Germany, the possibility of rockets was overlooked…

There is surely no better measure of the accuracy of the science in Woman In The Moon than the fact that when, in 1933, the Nazis embarked upon the research program that would ultimately produce the V-2 long-range guided ballistic missile, their first step was to ban it from any further screenings. They even went so far as to impound the model rockets used in the film, considering them too dangerously informative for general access.

This is hardly the place for a moral examination of Operation Paperclip, even if I was qualified to undertake it…but there is no getting away from the uncomfortable realities behind the scientific research that finally would send a rocket to the moon. Wernher von Braun may be the best-known of the NASA scientists who earlier, willingly or not, exercised their skills for the Nazis, but he was not the only one: among the rest we find Hermann Oberth.

Towards the end of WWII, Oberth and his family were living in what would become part of the American Zone of occupied Germany. Whether with definite future ideas or not, in 1948 the Americans allowed Oberth to relocate to Switzerland. In 1955, he joined von Braun, one of his earliest disciples, at NASA: their work together would produce the Saturn V rocket.

It is difficult to reconcile these two visions of Hermann Oberth—and even more so when we add to the equation the pop-culture version of him that emerged in the 1920s: the scientific outcast who did indeed go on to prove the fools wrong. There’s certainly no easy answer to how we’re “supposed” to feel about any of this.

(Me? – I cheat: I figure if Star Trek can cut Oberth some slack, so can I.)

So for the moment let’s just focus on Oberth’s role in the development in that rare but fascinating branch of the science-fiction film that deals with established science and the rational extrapolation from it. Monsters and madmen may be more fun, but there is an intellectual thrill to the hard-science film that is hard to beat, and which is even greater with hindsight—in the realisation of what certain brilliant individuals could conceive years and even decades before it even began to become reality.

We are experiencing at the moment a slightly strange but very welcome proliferation of what we can still call “space-flight films”, every one of which can ultimately be traced back to Woman In The Moon. If Oberth’s writings had inspired a generation of scientists, the film to which he lent his vision inspired—well, not a generation, but a handful of later film-makers who sought to add the knowledge of their own time to his proven theories, while envisaging a soaring future.

We should note here that though the line between Woman In The Moon and Destination Moon now seems straight, and in some ways certainly is – and though it would be many years after the event before Western science-fiction fans would realise it – the space-flight film took an interesting detour through the Soviet Union between the 1930s and the 1950s: before, that is, Soviet scientists put a figurative rocket up the American tail-pipe on the 4th October 1957.

As always, the reality was preceded by the vision, with film-makers paving the way by turning into a form of reality the wondrous possibilities of scientific theory.

Footnote:This may have been the first serious space-flight film, but it wasn’t the first science-fiction film to dabble in hard science. Twenty years earlier, the British film-maker, Walter R. Booth, imagined aerial warfare with equally eerie prescience; the esteemed El Santo has more on that subject.

This review is for Part 3 of the B-Masters’ 20th anniversary celebration!

Original title: Pikovaya Dama. While much of Russian society, including most of his fellow-officers, gambles for high stakes, German (Pavel Biryukov) cannot afford to play and only looks on. German is one of those who has heard the strange stories of the elderly Countess (Antonina Pozharskaya), and her possession of “the secret of the three cards”, which gives her power at the gambling-tables. As the Countess walks past him, German takes up and contemplates the three cards in question, as his friends laugh mockingly. At a ball given by the Countess, German is approached by two masked figures, who each torment him with three cards. That night, German steals into the Countess’ room, first pleading with her for the secret of the three cards, then threatening her with his pistol. To his horror, the Countess dies of fright. The next night, however, German is visited by the spirit of the Countess—and learns the secret of the cards… Adapted and directed by Pyotr Chardynin, this silent film is evidently the first of many attempts to film the the famous short story by Alexander Pushkin. The story itself, though sometimes classified as horror, is rather a morality play with supernatural overtones. This fifteen-minute version, like many early silent adaptations of literary works, assumes that the viewer is perfectly familiar with the source material, and is therefore occasionally hard to follow if you’re not. (In fact, this version may have been based upon Tchaikovsky’s opera rather than the original story.) However, the central plot-thread is there – just barely – with German getting an object lesson in being careful what he prays for; although the parallel plot concerning German’s exploitation of Liza (Aleksandra Goncharova), the Countess’s granddaughter, is confusingly handled. The acting in The Queen Of Spades is broad (to say the least), the special effects rudimentary, and the camera completely static—giving us some weirdly compressed scenes, particularly “the ball”. However, the attention to detail in the art direction and costume design is striking. Available prints of this film are in remarkably good condition.

The Queen Of Spades (1916)

Original title: Pikovaya Dama. An all-night gambling-party takes place at the home of a Russian officer called Narumov. It is remarked that German (Ivan Mozzhukhin), though he watches the play so intently, never touches a card; he explains simply that he cannot afford the risk. When the games end and the gamblers gather to drink and laugh, Narumov proposes a toast to the health of his grandmother, the Countess Anna Fedotovna (Yelizaveta Shebueva), whose birthday it is, and then proceeds to tell a strange story… As a young wife, the Countess (Tamara Duvan) accumulated huge gambling-debts which her husband, the Count (Polikarp Pavlov), would not pay. In desperation, the Countess turned for help to the Count Saint-Germain (Nikolai Panov), who revealed to her the secret of the three cards which, played in a particular order, would ensure success at the tables. In this way the Countess was enabled to recoup her losses and pay her debt… German becomes obsessed with this story: he begins to haunt the street outside the Countess’ house, then starts a cynical courtship of the old lady’s ward, Lizaveta (Vera Orlova). By these means, German gains access to the Countess’ room one night, first pleading with her for her secret, then threatening her. To his horror, she dies of fright. The next night, however, the Countess’ spirit appears to German—and tells him what he wants to know… This second filming of The Queen Of Spades, made six years after the first, was directed by Yakov Protazanov, who also adapted Pushkin’s short story with Fyodor Otsep. Running just over an hour, as opposed to the 1910 version’s fifteen minutes, this is necessarily a more detailed and thoughtful rendering of the tale. Nevertheless, it is bound to disappoint as a genre film: the emphasis is equally upon the back-story of the Countess and German’s manoeuvring to obtain her secret once he hears her story; the approach to both plot-threads is rather leisurely. It is therefore approximately three-quarters of the way into the film before the confrontation scene occurs, with German’s subsequent use of his ill-gotten knowledge necessarily rather rushed. However, it is an interesting exercise to compare the two first two versions of The Queen Of Spades, and the advances made in film-making technique over the intervening six years. The camera is still static here, but Protazanov uses movement within the frame and interesting angles to open up his action; while the art direction and costumes are again first-rate. The cast generally is afflicted with distracting black-rings-around-the-eyes makeup; but though Tamara Duvan overdoes it as the young Countess, and Ivan Mozzhukhin (no doubt intentionally) is a bit flamboyant as German, the rest offer quite natural performances, with Vera Orlov perhaps the best as the unfortunate Lizaveta. The uncredited actor playing Narumov is also good. The film’s special effects are rudimentary, with Yelizaveta Shebueva making an amusingly solid “spirit”; and while some superimpositions are used well during the main plots, those meant to represent German’s mental torments are unimaginative. However, the film does give us a large and rather creepy spider-web, complete with an adorable fake spider.

In his efforts to obtain the formula of a new and deadly poison gas, Professor Kosloff (Sheldon Lewis) recruits Clifford Price (Eddie Phillips), a young man of high social standing but no money. Price takes Kosloff to an evening party hosted by Hugh Thornwall (Gordon Sackville), the inventor of “Thornite”, where he learns that the maidservant, Marie (Violet Schram), is another of Kosloff’s agents. Meanwhile, Kosloff sees clearly that Price is in love with Diane Winter (Edith Thornton), the sister of Janet Thornwall (Virginia Pearson). An agitated Janet greets with relief the arrival of Larry Hutchdale (Charles Hutchison), an ex-Secret Serviceman whose professional exploits won him the nickname, ‘Lightning Hutch’. Observing Janet’s emotional state, Price manages to eavesdrop on her conversation with Hutch, and learns that he has retrieved for her some compromising letters. Seeing that these might make a handy weapon, Price orders Marie to steal the letters. Meanwhile, Hutch presses Diane to announce their engagement, but she resists, telling him she isn’t ready to settle down. Discovering that her letters are missing, a frightened Janet alerts Hutch, whose attention is drawn to the suspicious behaviour of Price and Kosloff. Recognising in Hutch an obstacle to his plans, Kosloff has him abducted; and while he manages to escape this first trap, Hutch is later framed for robbery-homicide—meaning that while he fights to prevent Kosloff obtaining the gas formula, he must also evade the police… This silent serial is a strange mixture of the good and the bad—the latter getting in the way of full enjoyment of the former. To take its most obvious weakness first, Charles Hutchison was neither of the right age nor the right physique for the role of ‘Hutch’, and this lends a jarring edge to what would otherwise be some impressive action set-pieces, and an uncomfortable one to Hutch’s romance with Diane. Of course, since Hutchison also directed this, his inappropriate casting isn’t altogether surprising. (Actually, almost everyone here is too old for the part they’re playing: perhaps Hutchison was trying to hide a tree in a forest?) The other main problem with Lightning Hutch is the plot itself, which is just too full of the genuine stupids for the viewer easily to go along with it—my personal favourite touch being the police considering Hutch’s fingerprints on his own property conclusive evidence of his guilt in the theft of some valuable bonds and the killing of their owner. You’d think as an ex-Secret Service agent Hutch might be given the benefit of the doubt – or at least have some influential connections – but instead the script hangs him out to dry in order to create a scenario in which he is constantly chased by some astonishingly incompetent police officers even as he chases Kosloff and Price. In addition to this, there’s the fact that Janet’s compromising situation is treated as a matter as serious as the poison gas itself—such that her decision to hand over to the bad guys the formula for a gas “capable of destroying the human race” (!!!!) in exchange for her letters basically passes without criticism. Lightning Hutch also boasts an all-too-typical bit of serial-absurdity when Kosloff, having fallen for Diane for no discernible reason, gets her into his clutches in order to force upon her—lawful matrimony —gasp!! But if you can overlook its various plot idiocies, Lightning Hutch offers compensation in the form of some seriously good surrounding material, including a great deal of striking location shooting in and around San Francisco, which opens up the action and keeps this visually interesting. Mixed in with this is some impressive stunt-work—some of it real, some of it faked; some of it Charles Hutchison and some of it not; but all of it imaginative. However, perhaps the most startling thing about Lightning Hutch is the absence of the cheating cliff-hanger! – with most episodes concluding with Hutch in imminent danger, and the next opening with a reasonable (or serial-reasonable) escape-scene; while one episode concludes, unexpectedly, with Hutch’s attempted rescue of an abducted Diane failing outright. And finally—we really can’t close this without mentioning the main villain’s highly suggestive name: “Boris Kosloff”…

The Crooked Circle (1932)

The team of amateur criminologists led by Colonel Walters (Berton Churchill) succeeds in exposing and capturing a member of the criminal gang known as “the Crooked Circle”, whose members meet wearing masks and are unaware of each others’ identities. The Crooked Circle draws lots to decide which is them is to take revenge by murdering Walters; the task falls to the gang’s one female member… Brand Osborne (Ben Lyon) is due to resign from Walters’ team due to his engagement to Thelma Parker (Irene Purcell); Walters introduces to the rest Osborne’s replacement, Dr Yoganda (C. Henry Gordon), a Hindu mystic. A message is sent to Walters warning him that he is fated to die between midnight and on o’clock… At Melody Manor, Walters’ new home on Long Island, housekeeper Nora Rafferty (Zasu Pitts) is terrified when she learns of the house’s dark history, which includes murder and a violin-playing ghost. The criminologists agree to meet at the Manor to protect Walters, but Osborne is delayed when an enterprising criminal (Robert Frazer) persuades Officer Crimmer (James Gleason) to arrest him. However, everyone – including Crimmer – eventually gathers at Melody Manor where, at midnight, the clock strikes thirteen, the lights go out—and Walters disappears… This horror-comedy directed by H. Bruce Humberstone is one of a seemingly endless series of “old dark house” pseudo-thrillers produced in the early days of sound; though of course the genre already had a long history, through the silent era. You may well end up wishing The Crooked Circle was a silent film too, because whatever potential it had as either a comedy or a thriller is drowned out by Zasu Pitts’ non-stop whining and shrieking—all meant to be funny, of course, but trust me, it isn’t: poor Zasu was basically the white female equivalent of the era’s “cowardly Negro” construct, and played this role to a greater or lesser extent in any number of films (and as a consequence ended up as the model for Olive Oyl). Even James Gleason, who could be very funny, overplays his hand here as the irascible cop on the case. It’s a pity that the screenwriters didn’t get the balance better, because there are a few really promising touches in The Crooked Circle, including a plot in which almost nobody is precisely who they seem to be; but most of this gets lost amongst the comedy schtick and the endless array of sliding panels, secret passages, and people disappearing and reappearing at regular intervals. The cast is full of familiar faces, though few of them really make an impact: C. Henry Gordon as an unlikely “Hindu” and Irene Purcell as seeming society-girl Thelma get the best of it, with the rest tending to get overwhelmed by the scenario. Those with a higher tolerance than me for the shrieking-and-running-around brand of comedy may well enjoy The Crooked Circle more than I did—which is not to say I didn’t find any of it funny: I did; just not anything that was meant to be funny. This, for instance, in the wake of the discovery of Walters’ body, was apparently intended seriously:

Carter: “By the way, Brand, before you got here tonight, a queer-acting hunchback brought in a basket of tomatoes.”Osborne: “That’s strange!”

The Crime Of Dr Crespi (1935)

Based upon The Premature Burial by Edgar Allan Poe (and admits it, which films don’t always). Dr Andre Crespi (Erich von Stroheim) is the head of the Taft Clinic and a renowned surgeon. When former colleague Dr Stephen Ross (John Bohn) is severely injured in a car accident, his doctors agree that Crespi is the only one who might be able to save his life. This places his wife, Estelle (Harriet Russell), is a difficult position: Crespi was once desperately in love with her, and still blames Ross for coming between them. Despite this, Crespi responds to her pleas for help and saves Ross’s life with his surgical skills. It seems at first that Ross will recover fully; however, after being given an injection by Crespi, he suddenly fails and dies. Two days later, however, Crespi enters the hospital morgue to find Ross just coming out of a catatonic state. Crespi gloats over him, telling him that he to be punished at last—and that further injections will ensure that he remains “dead” through his own funeral, and wake again only after he has been buried… Though it runs only for just over an hour, The Crime Of Dr Crespi is still too long: it would have worked as a half-hour TV episode, but as it stands everything but the central plot-thread is just tiresome padding. It is painful watching Erich von Stroheim toil away in a low-low-budget B-film like this—though of course, he’s also the reason you do watch it; and to his credit he seems amused by the proceedings rather than contemptuous. Director John Auer fully understood the one attraction of this production, too: whole minutes pass while the camera watches Crespi / von Stroheim do ordinary things like fill out paperwork. And as long as The Crime Of Dr Crespi stays focused upon the obsessed surgeon taking his revenge on his perceived rival, it is sufficiently entertaining—though rather flat and dreary until we reach the funeral scene, when suddenly we get an unexpected outbreak of Germanic artiness. Meanwhile, Crespi’s subordinate, Dr Thomas (Dwight Frye, playing a “normal” character but still getting treated like crap), has become convinced that Crespi murdered Dr Ross—setting up the film’s only other highlight, an hilariously casual body-snatching sequence: “Well, how long will it take?” Dr Arnold (Paul Guilfoyle) demands impatiently, when Thomas proposes that they dig Ross up for a quick autopsy, and shove him back in with others none the wiser if it turns out they’re wrong…

(Pay no attention to the IMDb’s summary of this film: if this were accurate, it would be getting a full review: A crazed scientist invents a serum that induces a catatonic state in whoever it is injected into. He uses the serum to paralyze his enemies, so that he can bury them alive.)

Crimes At The Dark House (1940)

On the goldfields of Australia, a man is murdered as he sleeps; his killer takes from his possession a distinctive signet-ring, and a letter announcing that the man’s father has died… At Blackwater Park in England, the staff prepare for the arrival of their new master, Sir Percival Glyde (Tod Slaughter), who has not been at the house since he was a boy. The new baronet meets with his attorney, Mr Merriman (David Keir), and is appalled to learn that his late father left him some fifteen thousand pounds in debt. Merriman then hastily reminds Sir Percival of the agreement made between his father and his friend Mr Fairlie (David Horne), that there should be a marriage between himself and Laura Fairlie (Sylvia Marriott), Fairlie’s heiress-niece. Sir Percival’s relief is short-lived: his next callers are Dr Fosco (Hay Petrie) and a Mrs Catherick (Elsie Wagstaff), the latter of whom was once the baronet’s mistress, and bore his child after he departed for Australia. Fosco is the head of a private asylum, where the unstable Ann Catherick (Sylvia Marriott) is usually confined; and he has come to warn Sir Percival that the girl – who harbours a violent hatred towards her father – has escaped… If the activities of any one individual ever defined the expression “an acquired taste”, it might be the films of Tod Slaughter, who spent the 30s and 40s transferring Victorian melodramas (in which he had first made his name as an actor, when they were revived on stage in the early 20th century) to the silver screen. “Larger than life” barely covers it—as in this bizarre adaptation of Wilkie Collins’ famous sensation novel, The Woman In White: “bizarre” because while the outlines of the novel are there – more faithfully than in some more recent adaptations – in Crimes At The Dark House the emphasis of everything has been shifted, making Sir Percival Glyde the centre of the story, and – and this is the unforgivable part – reducing the novel’s two best and most memorable characters, Count Fosco (here Dr Fosco) and Marian Halcombe (here Marian Fairlie, Hilary Eaves), to mere supporting characters; and in the latter case, an unnecessary one. But there is really only room for one in any Tod Slaughter melodrama: the actor chews the scenery with complete abandon, chuckling and twisting his moustache as he plots and seduces and murders his way through the rest of the cast; all that’s missing is a booing and hissing live audience. It isn’t all fun, though: the film exploits the British censor’s tolerance for this sort of crime drama (strange, given the contemporary objection to supernatural horror), and dwells with leering glee upon both the unfortunate Laura’s wedding-night, and Sir Percival’s later attempted rape of Marian. But generally speaking, the novel’s plot is allowed to play out, with the additional twist of Mrs Catherick recognising “Sir Percival” as an imposter: Fosco becomes the baronet’s accomplice as he schemes to get his hands on his wife’s money, a plot which exploits the physical similarities between Laura and the unstable Ann Catherick; while Laura’s lost love, drawing-master Paul Hartwright (Geoffrey Wardwell), teams up with Marian to try and expose Sir Percival and right his numerous wrongs…

Cleopatra’s Daughter (1960)

Original title: Il sepolcro dei re (The King’s Tomb). During the Egyptian civil war, Shila (Debra Paget), the daughter of Cleopatra, is sent away to the ruling family of Assyria. Many years later, when Assyria is conquered by Egypt, Shila is captured along with the other members of her foster family; and while the rest are executed, Tegi (Yvette Lebon), the Queen-Mother of the weak, neurotic Pharoah Nemorat (Corrado Pani), persuades her son that a marriage with Cleopatra’s daughter will both secure his position and bring Assyria under full Egyptian rule. Shila herself wishes only for death, but is persuaded to endure her position by Resi (Ettore Manni), the court physician. Meanwhile, Kefren (Erno Crisa), Nemorat’s counsellor, plots against him with his mistress, Tyra (Andreina Rossi). Shila and Resi fall in love, which drives her to even greater coldness towards Nemorat. Her rejection of him provokes an outburst of brutal violence against her, and then a breakdown. Seizing his chance, Kefren poisons Nemorat—who dies denouncing Shila, and demanding that she be immured alive in his tomb… The first thing to understand about Cleopatra’s Daughter is that its English-language version bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Italian original, which has nothing to do with Cleopatra or her fictional daughter, and is in fact set some 2500 years earlier than Cleopatra’s reign, during the time of Keops / Khufu, who brought about the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza. The second thing is that I watched it in the dreadful P&S / dubbed Mill Creek “Warriors 50-Pack” version, so you’ll excuse me if certain details are fuzzy. As it stands, the first half of Cleopatra’s Daughter is fairly dull and angsty. The film picks up pace, however, over its second half, when it becomes a fairly amusing melding of The Egyptian and Land Of The Pharoahs. When Shila is – more or less accidentally – framed for the murder of Nemorat, Resi conceives a desperate plan to save her. Permitted to see Shila as a doctor, he slips to her a drug that will put her into a death-like state, persuading her to “confess” to the murder and then seemingly commit suicide. His plan to substitute a body goes wrong, however, and the still-living Shila is entombed with Nemorat in the Great Pyramid—forcing Resi into partnership with a band of thieves and tomb-robbers… The last section of Cleopatra’s Daughter is entertaining and suspenseful, combining Resi’s race against time to save Shila with the robbers’ race against time to rob Nemorat’s tomb before their efforts are discovered; the various subplots underscored by an almost-running joke in which Resi’s plans are repeatedly complicated and thwarted by others’ refusal to believe he’s doing all this just for love of Shila. The second half of the film also contains two of its better performances, one from Robert Alda (in his second film after his relocation to Rome) as Inuni, architect of the Great Pyramid and the only one who knows how its many blind alleys, secret passages and death-traps may be navigated; and the other from a young Rosalba Neri as the only female member of the band of tomb-robbers. Ettore Manni is solid as Resi, but Debra Paget has disappointingly little to do as Shila, other than look beautiful and distressed.

Conqueror Of The Orient (1960)

Original title: Il conquistatore d’Oriente. A vast territory is under the cruel control of Dakar (Paul Muller), who uses ruthless methods to keep the populations of the provinces under his rule in subjection, and exacts draining tributes. These are usually in the form of gold or jewels, or conversely the products of the district; but Dakar is startled and delighted when his appointed rulers of one province bring as their tribute the Princess Fatima (Irène Tunc). Dakar begins making plans to consolidate his position via marriage to Fatima, despite her violent opposition and the warnings of his loyal concubine, Dinazar (Gianna Maria Canale), who finds herself cast aside. Meanwhile, in a fishing village, young men clamour for instruction in arms and archery from the elderly Omar (Fosco Giachetti), who rumour insists spent his youth as a soldier. Omar’s star pupil is his own adopted son, Nadir (Rik Battaglia). In the palace, Fatima is assisted to escape by her loyal maidservant, Katiscia (Tatiana Farnese): the plan succeeds, but leaves an unconscious Fatima drifting down the river in a boat. She is rescued by Nadir: an act that sets in motion a sweeping revolt against Dakar… Conqueror Of The Orient is a reasonably entertaining example of this sort of Arabian-Nights-ish actioner, but so completely obvious in everything it does that you’re left to wonder why anyone bothered to make it in the first place. Of course the throne of a wise and considerate ruler was usurped by an evil tyrant; of course Nadir and Fatima fall in love; of course the “humble fisherman” turns out to be the long-lost son of the previous ruler; of course he was rescued as a baby by his late father’s loyal retainer, and raised in ignorance of his birth, until – of course – the moment came for him to lead a revolt against Dakar. In fact the only remarkable thing in all this is how long Omar leaves everyone to suffer under Dakar’s cruelty before revealing the truth: Nadir isn’t exactly a spring chicken when he finally takes up his father’s sword and begins building an army. But perhaps it is exactly because of its tepidness that Conqueror Of The Orient doesn’t ultimately feel the need to be mean to anyone but Dakar, avoiding the usual raft of sacrificial deaths among the supporting characters, and even providing a new love for the mistakenly loyal Dinazar. In the end, the main attraction of this inoffensive time-waster is its collection of familiar Euro-film faces: Rik Battaglia as Nadir, Paul Muller as Dakar, Gianna Maria Canale as Dinazar, and Aldo Pini as the head prison guard, among others.

Conduct Unbecoming (1975)

Two young second lieutenants, Arthur Drake (Michael York) and Edward Millington (James Faulkner), travel to the North-West frontier of India to begin their probationary term in the army. Both are the sons of military men who served with the same regiment; but while the middle-class Drake embraces his father’s traditions and plans to build a career, the aristocratic Millington admits frankly that he intends to get himself out of the regiment and back to England as quickly as possible. To Drake’s horror, he is as good as his word, doing everything he can to antagonise his senior officers—including putting himself in the way of Marjorie Scarlett (Susannah York), the beautiful widow of a regimental hero. The two young recruits continue along their separate paths until the night of a regimental ball, when – hysterical and dishevelled – Mrs Scarlett claims that Millington attacked her. Conscious of the scandal that would result from an open court-martial, as well as the damage to Mrs Scarlett’s reputation, Captain Harper (Stacy Keach) convenes a “subaltern’s court”: an unofficial trial conducted amongst the officers of the regiment. When Drake is appointed to defend Millington, he infuriates the other officers by doing his best; a sardonic Millington must explain to him that “the honour of the regiment” requires, rather, that he do nothing. Drake’s own sense of honour will not permit this, however. As the trial proceeds, Drake makes two major discoveries: that Millington will not, as he supposes, merely be discharged from the army should he be found guilty, but kept in the regiment on perpetual punishment—something that turns Millington’s attitude from flippancy to desperation; and that the attack upon Mrs Scarlett was not the first such in the district, the other occurring long before he and Millington arrived… Barry England’s play, Conduct Unbecoming, was a hit in the West End before becoming a modest one also on Broadway: the latter perhaps a surprise given the play’s very British antecedents and its bitterly sour focus on Empire, the Raj, and the profound ugliness that may hide behind words such as “tradition” and “honour”. For what is, effectively, a courtroom drama, the play proved strangely difficult to transfer to the screen, with screenplays by Terrence Rattigan and Bryan Forbes being rejected before an adaptation by Robert Enders was filmed by Michael Anderson. As a courtroom drama, Conduct Unbecoming has the usual attractions, which in this case include the situation of an inexperienced lawyer rocking the boat by not playing by the rules: the scenes in which Drake succeeds in forcing his infuriated fellow-officers to accept the arguments he is making in defence of Millington are among the film’s strongest. Ultimately, however, this is a strangely muted production that somehow never puts enough emphasis in the right places, leaving the viewer too often missing the point or drawing the wrong conclusions; while the story’s strange climax seems to come out of the blue. In particular, the attack upon Mrs Scarlett is poorly staged—both in respect of how much time has passed between when we last see her with Millington and when she bursts into the ballroom, and (incredibly enough) what has actually supposed to have happened to her: it is well into the trial before the viewer understands that she is not making an accusation of rape; that when she says “assault”, that’s what she means. (And this, in turn, is indicative of how very often a soft-pedalling euphemism is used in this context.) But neither, and even more critically, is the viewer aware that Mrs Scarlett has in fact been physically injured in the attack; though the nature of those injuries are understandably concealed until Drake forces them into the light of scrutiny. Possibly this is simply the result of poor acting by Susannah York, or poor direction by Michael Anderson, but the initial implication seems to be that Mrs Scarlett has messed herself up and is making a false accusation for some reason of her own, which of course significantly influences the viewer’s interpretation of Millington’s “trial”. However—once all this has settled down, a genuinely horrifying tale of misogyny and racism emerges, with Drake able to prove that a similar, though even more serious, attack occurred several months earlier, upon an Indian woman, the young widow Mrs Bandanai (Persis Khambatta)—and that, because the victim was Indian, it was merely hushed up. Furthermore, both Mrs Bandanai and Mrs Scarlett were attacked by a man wielding a sword, in a way that mimicked the regiment’s favourite mess-hall game of “pig-sticking”… For all its faults, Conduct Unbecoming is generally well-acted by an excellent cast, which includes Trevor Howard as the regiment’s colonel; Richard Attenborough as the loyal Major Roach, whose testimony turns the trial on its head; Christopher Plummer as the arrogant Major Wimbourne; Michael Culver as Lt. Fothergill, the “prosecuting attorney”; James Donald as the reluctantly testifying doctor; and Rafiq Anwar as the regiment’s Indian attendant, whose loyalty to the memory of Drake’s father makes him “break ranks” by revealing the attack upon Mrs Bandanai. However, the surprise packet here is a strangely cast Stacy Keach (presumably the old “American actor to sell a British film” trick), who both maintains his accent and gives a strong performance as Captain Harper, whose initial determination to destroy Millington gives way to a genuine attempt to rehabilitate the honour of his regiment. Though made chiefly at Shepperton Studios (and looking it), the opening parade-ground scenes of Conduct Unbecoming were filmed on location outside Islamabad, the play’s original setting.

Death On The Nile (1978)

Heiress Linnet Ridgeway (Lois Chiles) is approached by her best friend, Jacqueline de Bellefort (Mia Farrow), about a possible job for her fiancé, Simon Doyle (Simon MacCorkindale). Some time later, a wedding takes place—but it is between Simon and Linnet… The news of Linnet’s marriage – which gives her control of her fortune – is like a bombshell for her American trustees, one of whom, Andrew Pennington (George Kennedy), decides to “accidentally” meet her in Egypt, where she and Simon are honeymooning, in the hope she will be distracted enough to sign certain papers without reading them… Meanwhile, the honeymoon is being painfully disrupted by the distraught Jacqueline, who follows and harasses the couple wherever they go. Simon and Linnet make double-plans, overtly travelling in one direction while they make their escape in a paddle-steamer up the Nile. However, to the dismay of the Doyles and the embarrassment of everyone else, here too Jacqueline appears. One night, in a drunken rage, she shoots Simon, wounding him in the leg, before collapsing in hysteria. She is carried to her cabin and put under the care of a nurse, who gives her a sedative and stays with her all night. Consequently, Jacqueline has an iron-clad alibi when, the next morning, Linnet is found shot dead… Coming only second in the rush of Agatha Christie adaptations to hit the big screen in the late 70s and early 80s, this version of Death On The Nile benefits from sticking reasonably close to its source novel, as well as from its location shooting in Egypt. That said, there is a distinct tendency here both to over-simplify and to over-do: the plot and the characterisations are both stripped down, while the screenplay by Anthony Shaffer tends to spell everything out in minute detail—which has the result of dragging the film out to unnecessary length, and allowing the viewer to dwell on the more logistically questionable details in the plot. (Although, needless to say, the cobra smuggled into Poirot’s cabin did NOT originate with Agatha; and where did he / she / they get a cobra from, anyway??) This was Peter Ustinov’s first outing as Hercule Poirot, and right from the outset there is a note of burlesque in his characterisation; and if his Poirot is not as much of a buffoon here as would later be the case, there are still moments that make you wince (Poirot tangoing after dinner?); although the most objectionable thing is a lightness of tone, particularly in the detective’s attitude towards the murder, that is completely out of place. Ustinov is joined in this by Angela Lansbury, who overacts shamelessly as alcoholic novelist, Salome Otterbourne. The way that Linnet is depicted is also problematic: rather than being dangerously tunnel-visioned due to her life of privilege, she has been dumbed down into just a bit of a bitch. (I was – unreasonably? – annoyed by the mispronunciation of her name: it’s LIN-et, you ignoramuses, not Lin-ETTE!) The rest of the cast is generally effective, although the supporting roles have been reduced and some of the characters melded—leaving us with Bette Davis as the wealthy and respectable – and secretly kleptomaniacal – Mrs Van Schuyler; Maggie Smith as her resentful nurse-companion, Miss Bowers, whose family was ruined by Linnet’s father; David Niven as Colonel Race, on hand to keep an eye on Andrew Pennington; Jack Warden as clinic-head Dr Bessner, who Linnet had denounced as a quack; Olivia Hussey as Rosalie Otterbourne, whose mother was being sued by Linnet for defamation; Jon Finch as would-be social revolutionary, Mr Ferguson; and Jane Birkin as Louise the maid, who has blackmail on her mind…

The Mirror Crack’d (1980)

There is great excitement around the village of St Mary Mead, where Gossington Hall has been rented by film director Jason Rudd (Rock Hudson) and his actress-wife, Marina (Elizabeth Taylor). Furthermore, the grounds of the Hall are to host a charity fete marking the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Though she attends, Miss Jane Marple (Angela Lansbury) falls and injures her ankle, and is sent home. She is therefore not present when tragedy strikes, and a local woman, Heather Babcock (Maureen Bennett), is taken ill and dies after meeting Marina. When autopsy proves that the cause of death was an overdose of barbiturates, Scotland Yard assigns to the case Inspector Dermot Craddock (Edward Fox), who also happens to be Miss Marple’s nephew. One of the main witnesses is Cherry Baker (Wendy Morgan), a young woman who does housework for Miss Marple, but was also hired to serve drinks to the special guests at the fete who were invited into the house. It is Cherry who first speaks of a strange moment when, while Heather Babcock was telling her a lengthy anecdote, Marina suddenly froze, staring blankly at something – or someone – on the staircase. It is also Cherry who provides a crucial piece of evidence: that Heather’s own drink was spilled, and that the one she swallowed had been intended for Marina… The Mirror Crack’d walks a line between its more serious predecessors and the increasingly camped-up adaptations of Agatha Christie which followed it (in which latter category we can place Evil Under The Sun, considered in the previous update). On the whole it is played straight, much to the film’s benefit; but at the same time there is an air of burlesque around any scenes which actually deal with actors and film-making—and this includes the black-and-white pastiche which opens the film itself. Likewise, though The Mirror Crack’d is certainly guilty of stunt-casting, clearly more thought has been put into this than usual; and in fact the casting of Elizabeth Taylor as Marina gives the film a weird meta-quality, since it is fairly evident that Agatha had Liz’s private – or at any rate, personal – life in mind while writing the novel (maybe with a soupçon of Marilyn, too). However, the co-casting of Taylor with Rock Hudson is effective, since the mutual affection of these old friends is very apparent; while the film also offers Kim Novak as Marina’s co-star / frenemy, Lola Brewster; Tony Curtis as hard-nosed producer, Marty Fenn; Geraldine Chaplin as Jason Rudd’s assistant, Ella Zielinsky; Edward Fox as Inspector Craddock; and of course Angela Lansbury as Miss Jane Marple—one of all too many inappropriate castings of that particular character. (That said, the novel is dedicated to Margaret Rutherford, surely the most improbable Miss Marple of all!) In addition, the opening pastiche features a number of British character actors including Anthony Steel and Allan Cuthbertson; and a young Pierce Brosnan gets a single, dialogueless scene opposite Elizabeth Taylor (and is “clasped to her bosom”!). While for the most part The Mirror Crack’d follows its source novel, it also dwells at considerable length upon the film in production, and the bitchy sparring between Marina and Lola—and to make time for all this, the screenplay strips away most of Agatha’s misdirection, making it rather too obvious what is going on.

Tomie: Rebirth (2001)

Award-winning artist Kamata Hideo (Oshinari Shūgo) paints a portrait of a girl called Tomie (Sakai Miki). During a sitting, Tomie begins to wander around Hideo’s studio: she finds a number of photographs of Kitamura Hitomi (Endō Kumiko), the girlfriend of Aoyama Takumi (Tsumabuki Satoshi ), one of Hideo’s best friends. When Hideo snatches the photos away from her, Tomie retaliates by ruining her portrait—prompting Hideo to stab her to death with his palette knife… When Takumi and Hosoda Shun’ichi (Kikawada Masaya) arrive, they find Hideo cradling a sheet-covered body in his arms, and whispering that he loves her. That night, Takumi and Shun’ichi bury the body in the woods… With Hideo withdrawn and silent, Shun’ichi arranges a party at a restaurant to try and snap him out of it. Suddenly, the lights go out. Takumi and Shun’ichi go to speak to the manager, and in their absence an uninvited girl arrives and seats herself next to Hideo. “Tomie,” he whispers incredulously. “Murderer,” she whispers back… As the party falls apart, Takumi and Shun’ichi go looking for Hideo, who they left being sick in the bathroom—and find blood spilling from under the door of his cubicle… Written by Fujioka Yoshinobu and directed by Shimizu Takashi, this third entry in the series based upon the manga by Itō Junji is quite distinct in both look and tone from the previous films, Tomie and Tomie: Replay. In the casting of Sakai Miki, the film-makers seem to have been striving for a less other-worldly, more “human” Tomie; the film itself, rather than the pseudo-mystery of the previous two entries, is chiefly about the impact of Tomie upon the relationships of those touched by her. Somewhat contradictorily, however, this film has no hero or heroine: there are only the guilty and their victims. (Since the film is evidently striving for an emotional impact, it is annoying that the screenplay is so lax about properly introducing the characters and their connections to one another.) Shimazu Takashi’s most significant artistic choice in Tomie: Rebirth is to downplay the gore in favour of a focus upon the grotesque; and while there are one or two bloody scenes – and while Tomie’s severed head again plays a prominent role – the film’s most memorable imagery is built around the various partial incarnations of Tomie as she regenerates herself. While the dominant tone of Tomie: Rebirth is a sense of loss, these scenes help to weave a thread of sick humour through the tragedy—most notably in the, ahem, bonding activities of Shun’ichi and his mother. The other addition to the series at this point is an expansion of the ways in which Tomie can attack her victims: not merely as her own self, whether in whole or in part, but via anything upon which she has left a trace of herself—including in this case her damaged portrait, smeared with her blood, and even her lipstick…

The Demons Among Us (2006)

Also known as Demonsamongus. Joe Melton (Nathaniel Kiwi) moves to the small Victorian town of Miranda Falls and begins looking for a job. He inquires about a position at the local service station, where he meets attendant Kylie Fitzgerald (Laura Hesse). Later, Kylie must console her friend and co-worker, Sally Winters (Hollie Kennedy), whose brother, Jack (Michael Russo), died recently in a traffic accident. That night, Joe is woken by strange noises and, to his horror, discovers a distorted, bloody-mouthed figure attacking his cats. He bolts in terror into the night, seeking help, and eventually stumbles into the house of his nearest neighbours, the Winters, where he finds the parents and their surviving two sons gruesomely slaughtered. In his panic, Joe trips and falls, covering himself in the victims’ blood. Meanwhile, having failed to get her mother on the phone, Sally hurries home, where she discovers the bodies of her family. Racing back to her car, Sally sets out for Kylie’s house. On the way, Joe emerges from his hiding-spot in her back seat. Sally stops the car and runs, ignoring Joe’s desperate pleas of innocence. He pursues her into the woods—where both of them are confronted by the sight of the bloody-mouthed demon, who Sally recognises as her dead brother, Jack… This independent Australian horror movie is (like last entry’s Hidden, only more so) difficult to treat fairly. On one hand it was clearly made with a lot of enthusiasm, but on a painfully small budget—and in fact was shot on weekends over a period of two years, as friends and family could make themselves available. On the other— Possibly in order to disguise his budgetary limitations, writer-director Stuart Simpson resorted to every imaginable camera and design trick in this film, the results being what can only be described as Extreem Artiness. There’s barely a frame in The Demons Among Us that hasn’t been tampered with, whether by colour-drain or over-saturation, split-screens, focus tricks, extreme close-ups, superimposition, shaky-cam, night-vision, and a dozen other things I’ve ever forgotten or can’t put a name to. Coping with this – or not – is likely to be a highly individual thing. Personally I found the visual tricks less irritating than the film’s almost non-stop referencing of other films and film-makers, though this was probably done in a spirit of admiration. Another problem is that a heavy-handed satire / criticism of “consumerism” (possibly riffing on They Live?), which for most of the film seems shoehorned in and out of place, eventually turns out to be “the point”. (Begging the question of why the demons didn’t just make contact directly…?) With all this going on, most of the cast is given little chance—except for Nathaniel Kiwi, who spends the film trying desperately to be Bruce Campbell; the rest, as you would expect, range between adequate and painful. Meanwhile, the film’s gore effects are plentiful and wholehearted, if not always convincing. The Demons Among Us was filmed in and around Diggers Rest, a suburb on the outskirts of Melbourne (which is not actually as rural as this makes it look), and there is a definite pleasure – at least for some of us – in seeing a familiar horror scenario playing out in the Australian countryside, and stuffed full of local details—from blue police-tape, to ubiquitous allusions to Victoria Bitter, to Christmas decorations in the middle of summer, to yabbie races under the opening credits—which, as Stuart Simpson puts all of his “special thanks” upfront, go on for some considerable time…

(In the interests of fairness, I tried to put this aside, but—as you may imagine, the cat subplot did this film no favours with me; and nor did the roadkill during the credits, which was a bit too Wake In Fright for my liking…though I suspect it was rather a reference to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre…)

Beneath (2007)

As a teenager, Christy Westcot (Nora Zehetner) is involved in a car accident that leaves her older sister, Vanessa Locke (Carly Pope), barely alive after suffering horrendous burns. Vanessa hangs on to life for several months before dying, while Christy undergoes psychiatric care… Years later, Christy returns to the town of Edgemont for a funeral—still on medication for her mental-health issues, and using her art as a way of dealing with the dreams and visions of her sister’s accident which still plague her. Christy is invited to stay with her brother-in-law, Dr John Locke (Matthew Settle), and his young daughter, Amy (Jessica Amlee); although John’s mother, Mrs Locke (Gabrielle Rose), makes it clear she isn’t welcome. Christy bonds with Amy, who tells an unnerving story of “the dark thing” she insists lives in the house, and which enters her bedroom at night. Increasingly, Christy must deal with the frequent visions and blackouts brought on by her return home—and also with her illogical but persisting fear that Vanessa was buried alive… Beneath is a film that suffers badly from an identity crisis. There’s actually a decent mystery buried in it somewhere—but unfortunately it doesn’t want to be a mystery, it wants to be a horror film, and therefore sacrifices the framework necessary for the former in favour of a deluge of “visions” that are not particularly scary, and which finally just get in the way of the plot. They’re also a cheat, inasmuch as every time Christy gets stuck for what to do next, she “has a vision”. This focus on the booga-boogas leaves Beneath lacking what might have made it work, or at least work better—such as a better delineation of the social prominence and power of the Locke family, which the viewer is left to infer, and which is required to explain the behaviour of just about everyone else in the film. We also needed more than one throwaway line of dialogue to justify the ridiculously convoluted layout of the Locke house! (The real question, though, is why, given their estrangement since Vanessa’s death, John bothered to let Christy know about the funeral?) Although it finally manages a few interesting touches, Beneath is fighting an uphill battle from its opening trauma scene, the logistics of which are just too stupid. None of the characters – Christy included – behave in a remotely credible way; and the whole thing finally devolves into a tiresomely familiar chase-and-jump-scare scenario, notable only for the film-makers’ ignorance of – or disinterest in – the actual physical capabilities of the human body. This is also one of those films that proves that recent things can seem much more dated than those of decades earlier: its dropped-jaw attitude to the fact that Amy has a digital camera!!, and that Christy’s Nokia can take photos!! and be used as a torch!! is pretty damn hilarious…

Framed For Murder (2007)

During a violent altercation with her abusive husband, June Baldwin (Elisa Donovan) knocks him down with a statuette before fleeing the house with her baby. When the police subsequently investigate, they find Tony (Donovan Reiter) dead of two savage blows to the back of his head. Though she swears that she did not kill him, June recognises that she has no chance of beating a murder charge and accepts a deal for manslaughter… Eight years later, June is released, and moves in temporarily with her sister, Claire (Susan Walters), and her wealthy investment banker husband, Jason (Perry King). June tells Claire that, at last, her bipolar condition is under control, and that she is ready to start her life over, including being a mother to Sam (Steven McPhail), who is visiting California with friends. June explains to Claire that, although she is longing to be with him, she is not sorry that Sam is away at the present moment—as she has every intention of proving to him and the world that she did not kill his father. Claire is supportive of June’s resolution—but as soon as her sister leaves the room, she tampers with her medication… Framed For Murder is a silly if not unentertaining made-for-TV thriller. The best thing about it is that it is doesn’t try to hide the fact that Claire is the villain, since it is obvious to the viewer from the first moment we lay eyes on her. (Though my first guess, that her scheme was about possession of Baby Sam, was altogether wrong.) Instead, the film gives us parallel plots, with June trying to clear her name, and Claire doing everything she can to stop it happening. It soon emerges that Claire and her lover, landscape gardener Nick (Kevin Jubinville), are planning on murdering Jason and framing June for the crime. However, when June’s efforts to work out who else could have had motive for murdering Tony begin to bear fruit, an exasperated Claire persuades Nick that they cannot afford to have any questions raised about June’s guilt and/or mental condition, and that they must eliminate the potential threats posed by Tony’s former secretary, Karen (Sophie Gendron), who has information about his many infidelities, and Diane Desalvo (Lisa Langlois), a private investigator… If you’re going to watch Framed For Murder, it should be for the increasingly ridiculous plot, certainly not for the acting. Despite her situation, June is an oddly unsympathetic protagonist—partly because of Elisa Donovan’s unconvincing performance, partly because of the poor way she’s written, and partly because the film-makers convey June’s deteriorating mental condition chiefly by mussing her hair up. Susan Walters is a lot more fun as Claire, eyes glinting as she plots murder and the ruination of her sister—who, we learn in one of many absurd touches, she always hated for the extra attention won by her bipolar disorder (mental illness is such an unfair advantage, isn’t it?). The two male leads are both pretty awful; but Lisa Langlois as the P.I. and Claire Brousseau as June’s ex-con friend, Charlie, are better in their supporting roles.

Hallowed Ground (2007)

Stranded with car trouble in the isolated Midwestern town of Hope, Liz Chambers (Jaimie Alexander) finds herself the focus of unnerving interest from the townspeople, but is greeted as a kindred spirit by fellow-outsider Sarah Austin (Hudson Leick), a tabloid journalist. As they eat, Sarah tells Liz excitedly about the town’s strange history, in which a deranged preacher named Jonas Hathaway (Nick Chinlund) conducted ritual sacrifices to protect the crops, dressing his victims as scarecrows and crucifying them in the cornfields to drive away the crows that he believed had been sent by Satan. Subsequently having a vision of the Rapture, Hathaway had the townspeople take refuge in a shelter built beneath the cornfields. However, when a child was sent out to gauge the state of the world, she brought back men from the neighbouring town who, discovering the crucified victims, retaliated in kind on Hathaway before burning him alive. Now, Sarah concludes, there is a bare patch of ground where nothing grows—but where the spirit of Jonas Hathaway continues to wait… Sarah persuades Liz to accompany her to Hathaway’s farm, where she intends to take some photographs to support her story. Once arrived, the two women are disturbed by the number of crows present—alive and dead. Nevertheless they seek out the bare patch of land where Hathaway is supposedly buried; there, they hurriedly construct a scarecrow from materials brought along by Sarah and raise it on a rough wooden cross. Afterwards, they briefly separate, leaving Sarah alone with the scarecrow—which begins to move… Hallowed Ground is a fair but often painfully derivative horror movie which suffers from the over-familiarity of its material and a scenario that is both overcrowded and under-utilised—the latter illustrated by the fact that the summary above is (i) merely the back-story to the main plot, and (ii) delivered as written, as an indigestible info-dump, rather than via Liz and Sarah finding things out in-story. It takes too long for the film settle down into what we eventually recognise as its main plot, which concerns an attempt to resurrect Jonas Hathaway in the flesh via his possession of a baby born to – you guessed it – “the chosen one”. Surrounding this we have details stolen from both The Children Of The Corn and Harvest Home; a killer-scarecrow subplot which despite its supernatural elements seems to have wandered in from any old slasher movie; endless scenes of people running through cornfields; and one of my least-favourite clichés, the apparently trustworthy person who – oh, surprise! – turns out to be One Of Them (and a raving psycho, to boot). Hallowed Ground is also bookended by some truly awful CGI, particularly at its climax involving a deadly flock of crows. However, the film is not entirely without merit. It has some creepy scenes and images, even if perhaps these don’t have as much impact as they should. Liz is a strong and resourceful heroine, in whose survival the viewer becomes invested – without any guarantee of it – while her own back-story trauma, also over-familiar, is handled more lightly than usual. A bonus is the appearance of Chloe Grace Moretz as another of the town’s potential victims; and if she isn’t given as much to do as we would like, she’s fine in her limited role. Meanwhile, Ethan Phillips has an amusingly embarrassing turn as Hope’s current preacher and, potentially, the father of Jonas Hathaway’s vessel-baby—although not if Liz has anything to say about it…

Something Beneath (2007)

Despite the bizarre, unexplained death of a worker during construction and the attempts of a scientist, Dr Walter Connolly (Brendon Beiser), to highlight the environmental damage being caused by the project, the Cedar Gate Conference Center is completed and opened. Its first attendees, ironically enough, are the “Clean Earth” group, led by crusading priest, Father Douglas Middleton (Kevin Sorbo), who annoys celebrity activist, Mikaela Strovsky (Brittany Scobie), by not choosing her as his key-note speaker. Given that unwanted honour, the shy, geeky Eugene Herman (Rob McLaughlin) wanders off into the surrounding woods to practice his speech. There, he brushes against a tree, and finds his hand stained in a strange, black slime. Almost immediately he has a bizarre experience in which he finds himself lost in a huge forest, struggling against a terrifying asthma attack as the earth itself seems to consume him… The following morning, Father Middleton alerts event coordinator, Khali Spence (Natalie Brown), to Eugene’s apparent disappearance. She in turn assigns the resort’s head of security, Jackson Deadmarsh (Peter MacNeill), to find him—which he does, discovering Eugene’s body in the woods, his face contorted with terror… Meanwhile, while recording a vlog in her room, Mikaela is splashed with black slime from her bathroom tap—and begins to suffer a series of terrifying hallucinations… Knowledge is power, they say, and in my own case I knew to lower my expectations about Something Beneath from the moment I saw the names of Robert Halmi Sr and Robert Halmi Jr in the opening credits. The, uh, powers behind the previously considered Eye Of The Beastand Black Swarm, the Halmis have been responsible for a clutch of cheapie science fiction / monster movies whose most notable feature is their habit of declining to explain the appearance of their central menace. Something Beneath at least offers the suggestion that its slime monster was “always there”, and was only brought into conflict with Homo sapiens via the latter’s increasing environmental depredations. That said, both this film’s pro-environmentalism and its parallel eee-vil capitalism attitude are completely perfunctory and insincere; as indeed is its “Native Americans can fix anything” anti-climax. The first two-thirds of Something Beneath wander between the embarrassing and the confusing, with painful scenes involving Paris Hilton expy Mikaela (whose obsessing filming of herself dates this production, not in itself, but because the others find it weird) and hunky priest Father Middleton (who sets all the women blushing, first for one reason, then the other) interspersed with overlong hallucination inserts in which, supposedly, those infected are confronted by their “worst fears”. (These people have some really boring worst fears, including one guy – speaking of “dated” – taken out by House Of The Dead zombies.) However, the action finally settles into something watchable once the main characters figure out what’s going on and must find a way of dealing with the slime creature. It helps, too, that Dr Connolly reappears at this point in the story (if he wasn’t mad before, he is now); while the monster itself, though its conception outstripped the budget’s ability to realise it, is quite creepy and effective—if perhaps a bit over-familiar for those who know their science-fiction history. Kevin Sorbo and Natalie Brown are generally likeable as the leads, despite the cack-handed OMG I’m hot for a priest! subplot; while Peter MacNeill, Blake Taylor (as doomed plumber, Reggie) and Brendon Beisner lend fair support.

Quote: “It’s a massive, fluid, multi-celled entity whose separate parts can move independently or articulate into a single network: what’s not to love?”

The Grim Sleeper (2014)

South Central Los Angeles, 1987: a woman is shot in the chest and left for dead; but she does not die… Twenty years later, though employed as a fact-checker at the LA Weekly, Christine Pelisek (Dreama Walker) has ambitions as a journalist. Through her friendship with Bob Lesser (John Cassini), who works in the coroner’s office, Christine gets wind of a list of unsolved murders stretching back many years, which are being reinvestigated by the LAPD. She begins investigating on her own account, and discovers to her horror that several recent murders have exactly the same modus operandi as a number of cases from the 1980s—suggesting that a serial killer has been operating in South Central LA for more than twenty years. Christine persuades her editor (Susan Ruttan) to let her pursue the story; and though at first her actions bring her into conflict with the LAPD, finally Christine teams up with Detective Simms (Michael O’Neill) to track down the killer… If you’re thinking of watching The Grim Sleeper, it may help you to know that this is a Lifetime movie about a serial killer: you can imagine the results. This is one of those awkward “true story” productions where almost everyone’s name is changed, and a number of fictional characters introduced, often in a way that seems disrespectful to the real-life victims; and though the outlines of the case of Lonnie Franklin Jr are presented accurately enough, what the screenplay does in its details is more than a little uncomfortable. A major aspect of this story is how long it took the LAPD to pay enough attention to the string of murders of black women to even realise they were connected (several of the early victims had their files marked NHI—“no human involvement”); but while The Grim Sleeper is rightly critical of this, it soon backs away from anything really confrontational in favour of a joint focus on The Gruff Cop Who Really Does Care After All and The Spunky Girl Reporter…or in other words, it reproduces exactly what happened in real life: it sidelines the impact of the murders on the black community, and that community’s reaction, and keeps its focus on its white characters! Mind you—the film doesn’t ever seem to realise that it’s doing it, or how very patronising some of this feels. Otherwise, the film’s main flaw is that it lacks any sense of time passing: an investigation that took three years, and which required a breakthrough legal ruling regarding the use of familial DNA searches before it bore fruit, seems to be unfolding over days or weeks. I can’t imagine how crime-reporter Christine Pelisek felt about having her work linking the two crime sprees, and her involvement in the eventual capture of Franklin, dumbed down into this you-go-girl Lifetime production…but because this is a Lifetime production, you better believe we’re not going to escape this drama about the pursuit of one of the longest-operating serial killers in America’s history without single-girl Christine being reassured that she “deserves love” and will find it one day…

(Lonnie Franklin Jr was arrested in 2010; The Grim Sleeper was produced in 2014, while he was still awaiting trial, and therefore carries an innocent-until-proven-guilty disclaimer. Franklin was convicted in 2016 of ten counts of murder and one attempted murder; although it is now believed the apparent thirteen-year hiatus in his crimes which gave him his nickname was no such thing, and that his other victims have simply not been found—probably because, since he sometimes used dumpsters to dispose of bodies, they ended up in the LA County landfill…)

The Murder Pact (2015)

Camille (Alexa PenaVega), an aspiring singer-actress, is humiliated when her Broadway audition is cut short, and she is told she was only invited in the first place because of strings pulled by her successful male-model boyfriend, Will LaSalle (Beau Mirchoff). Despite her disappointment, Camille attends a gathering at the prestigious college attended by herself, Will, and their friends, Rick (Michael J. Willett) and Annabel (Renee Oldstead). She is unable at first to find Will—who is up on the roof with a furious Heidi (Madeleine Dauer), with whom, unbeknownst to Camille, he had a one-night stand. When Camille arrives with Rick and Annabel, there is a scene that ends with Heidi breaking through a railing and falling to her death. Appalled, the others quickly agree on a story meant to exonerate them from any involvement. They do not realise that Heidi’s roommate, Lisa (Sara Kapner), has witnessed the entire incident and has photographs of the four of them at the scene. Threatened with exposure, the friends must decide whether to tell the truth about Heidi’s death, to give in to Lisa’s blackmail demands—or to resort to murder…Though it picks up across its second half, the first stretch of The Murder Pact is a pretty gruelling experience—not least because this section of the film has a weird tone about it, as if for some reason it expects us to feel sorry for these vapid, entitled, thoroughly mean-spirited individuals as they rapidly escalate from covering up what was more or less an accident to contemplating premeditated murder. Similarly, it starts out looking as if Lisa will be our protagonist—until she decides that, justice for Heidi be damned, she’d rather have a big, fat, cash payment. And as, subsequently, Lisa is stupid enough to meet privately with the people she’s blackmailing, it’s rather hard to feel sorry for what happens next… In the wake of Lisa’s “disappearance”, Will, Camille, Rick and Annabel try to pick up the pieces of their lives—but then a series of strange events begins to shake their sense of security, and it becomes clear that either someone knows what they did, or Lisa isn’t dead after all… The Murder Pact is a deeply stupid film, but not, when all is said and done, without some entertainment value; although this revolves chiefly around the comeuppances that pursue the obnoxious central quartet. However, in order to enjoy this, it is necessary to switch your brain off—or at least not to think too much about the “explanations” offered for the story’s more improbable moments. On the whole, the cast is adequate, mostly because the actors are asked to do little but be hateful to one another and everyone else. That said, Alexa PenaVega seems out of place here—not so much as the group’s vacillating, Julie-James-ish character, but rather since we are given reason to believe that Lisa’s labelling of Camille as a “social-climbing gold-digger” isn’t entirely without some basis. John Heard turns up for a single scene as Will’s ruthless millionaire father, furious not because his son is a murderer, but because he hasn’t covered up his crime effectively enough; while Ethan Phillips has a small supporting role as one of the kids’ professors…who, we conclude, has signally failed in teaching them any ethics.

(Turning this into one-half of an Accidental Ethan Phillips Double-Bill! – though I’m not exactly hitting the high spots of his career. Or am I…?)

The Night Stalker (2016)

The law firm representing a man on Death Row and scheduled for execution believes that the murders for which he was convicted were in fact committed by Richard Ramirez (Lou Diamond Phillips), “the Night Stalker”. Lawyer Kit (Bellamy Young) receives permission from the authorities to meet with Ramirez, hopefully to win his trust and bring him to confess to the crimes. Kit is an expert on Ramirez, her interest in him dating back to her own adolescence during his reign of terror; and her meetings with the convicted serial killer bring memories of her youth flooding back—some of them painful and disturbing. Nevertheless, Kit makes a connection of sorts with Ramirez, who forces her to make a difficult decision when he will only tell her what she wants to know in exchange for learning some secrets from her past… The Night Stalker was directed by Megan Griffiths, who also adapted Philip Carlo’s The Night Stalker: The Life And Crimes Of Richard Ramirez, on which this was supposedly based—although it would have been more honest to say that one-half of it was. That half is a film worth watching, offering a thoughtful consideration of the social conditions that produced Richard Ramirez and, while by no means excusing his crimes, demonstrating that he was pretty much doomed from the outset. But unfortunately, the focus of The Night Stalker isn’t really the Night Stalker at all. Rather, this film foregrounds what is, in essence, a crossing of The Summer Of Sam with The Silence Of The Lambs; and while the former aspect is not without merit, giving us glimpses of a mid-80s California community gripped by its consciousness of the uncaught killer in its midst, the latter is tiresome and ultimately rather distasteful. Behind her cool career-woman persona, Kit is (of course) a bundle of neuroses and secrets; and it takes very little time in Ramirez’s company before her façade begins to crack… The Night Stalker is confusingly structured, jumping from character to character, and time-frame to time-frame, often with insufficient scene-setting. Kit herself is unappealing, though the most objectionable thing about her plot-thread is its underlying suggestion – in 2016!! – that, Oh my God she’s single there must be something wrong with her!…and of course there is. Lou Diamond Phillips is effective as Ramirez, however, leaving us with the sense that a powerful biopic could have been built around him; though, alas, this is definitely not that film.

Screenplay: Alun Falconer, Robert Dunbar and Don Chaffey, based upon a story by Alun Falconer

In the middle of the night, on the top floor of a London boarding-house, John Wilson (Richard Attenborough) wakes from a nightmare-wracked sleep to find his room ice-cold. He is unable to get his gas-meter working, and turns for help to his neighbour across the passage, an artist called Nicholas (Charles Houston). This causes embarrassment, as Nicholas is not alone: Miss Blair (Maureen Connell), his model and companion, urges him to get rid of the intruder, which Nicholas does—although not without a brief scuffle, which wakes Mr Pollen (Kenneth Griffith) on the floor below. Back in his room, the agitated Wilson throws his alarm-clock through the window, shattering the glass; it rings briefly as it hits the ground, in turn waking Mrs Barnes (Dorothy Alison) and her two young children on the ground floor. In a daze, Wilson then wanders down to the second floor, knocking on the door of the elderly Miss Acres (Amy Dalby). This brings her neighbour, Mr Pollen out of his room: he sees that Wilson is ill, and urges him to go back to his room. However, when he places a hand on the other man’s shoulder Wilson lashes out, knocking Pollen down; in the fall he breaks his glasses and cuts the bridge of his nose. Wilson then does retreat to his room; while Pollen calls the police to report the incident, over the dissuasions of both his landlady, Mrs Lawrence (Patricia Jessel), who doesn’t want the police in her house, and Mrs Barnes, who is worried about Wilson, with whom she is friendly. Given the nature of the incident, the police alert a mental welfare officer, Mr Sanderson (Donald Houston). However, when Wilson emerges from his room the sergeant (Patrick Jordan) approaches him. Wilson becomes increasingly angry and distressed; there is a scuffle, which ends with the sergeant falling down the stairs and being seriously injured; and what started as a minor incident escalates into a siege…

The Man Upstairs is a curious film—a thriller, at its simplest level, and one that plays out more or less in real time, and with a cinéma vérité approach that includes the absence of music on the soundtrack. However, this film is also a rather bleak commentary upon certain aspects of contemporary English society. Its setting, a London boarding-house with its mixture of tenants, of varying backgrounds and temperaments, was by this time a cliché in British film-making; and to an extent (though it is not) The Man Upstairs feels like a filmed play, with lots of set-piece scenes wherein the characters argue their individual positions as the situation upstairs becomes more and more fraught with the possibility of fatal violence.

And it is that very real possibility that makes The Man Upstairs so striking, given the time and place of its production. It is unusual to find a British film of this era that is so critical of the police – it was ahead of its time in that respect – and more unusual still is the nature of the criticisms being made. It is soon clear that whatever danger that Wilson poses to himself and others, it’s nothing compared to the danger posed to him by the police—who, it is soon evident, intend to revenge their injured colleague by pushing Wilson to do something that will give them an excuse to shoot him…

However—that’s easier conceived than done. It is hard to judge at this distance how this would have been received at the time, but throughout The Man Upstairs there’s a thread of what we now tend to view as black comedy with respect to the police getting the wherewithal to kill Wilson. Their actions in this respect are not entirely unjustified, as it emerges that Wilson himself is armed; but it is clear that the police do not want weaponry for self-defence.

BUT—British police did not then and largely do not now carry guns; an armed response is restricted for the most part to certain specialty units. And though the lack of firearms in the possession of the police on the scene of the Wilson incident would have been standard at the time, it is hard to know how to take the scenes in which the inspector called to the scene must send for, and sign for, a single handgun. To modern eyes it all seems rather absurd.

But there’s nothing at all absurd about what they do with that handgun, which is to stand outside John Wilson’s room praying for an opportunity…

At the same time, the note of tacit humour is maintained when the aggressive inspector (Bernard Lee) sends for weapons back-up to the army. A young soldier turns up with requested tear-gas, only to discover that he’s brought the wrong kind: the inspector wanted the kind you lob through the window, while what he’s been given is the kind you have to set off by hand while wearing a gas-mask—and there’s no mask. The Inspector then demands an “American-type anti-riot gun”, only to be told that while the army does have them, legally they’re only for use during overseas military operations, and not on home-soil—against British citizens. The soldier is apologetic, but he’s not budging on that point, despite all the inspector’s furious ranting about, “An emergency.”

The most worry aspect of The Man Upstairs is the increasingly naked intention of the inspector either to kill Wilson outright or drive him to suicide, he doesn’t much mind which. (To this end, he repeatedly prevents anyone trying to talk Wilson out or, when he can’t, limits the interaction to a futile few minutes.) Of course on one level this is understandable: the sergeant is the inspector’s friend and colleague, and for all anyone knows at the time his injuries are fatal. However, as the viewer is aware, the sergeant is to an extent to blame for his own situation: protocol demanded that he wait for the welfare officer, Sanderson, and allow him to speak to Wilson before any other action was taken; in approaching Wilson, the sergeant broke the rules.

But though it saves its most stringent criticisms for the police, The Man Upstairs has the grace not to treat Wilson entirely as an injured innocent—though a full and reasonable explanation for his behaviour is finally provided. Wilson does knock Mr Pollen down, essentially unprovoked (though when he speaks to Mrs Barnes, it is clear he has no memory even of meeting Pollen, let alone hitting him); he is responsible for the sergeant’s fall (though we are not shown the incident in detail, so it isn’t clear who was the aggressor); and he is armed—although the only thing he shoots is the spotlight over the way, which is nearly driving him insane. And he has had outbreaks of violence and shouting, even if most of the early ones, which convinced people something was wrong in the first place, were simply his unavailing struggles with his non-functioning gas-meter. And, as it turns out (and to the inspector’s gloating delight), Wilson does have a record, and he is a wanted man…although not under the name “John Wilson”.

And what exactly has driven Wilson to this point? Well—The Man Upstairs is being considered here, so I guess you know the answer, right?

At the beginning of the film we learn that Wilson is an insomniac who has barely slept for days; the pills he has been prescribed are not working, and even when he does sleep he is wracked by nightmares—or a nightmare. Our first clear hint of his specific situation comes in his first conversation with Mrs Barnes, when we learn that Wilson has been helping the elder Barnes child with his homework. Ignoring both Mrs Barnes’ offer of a doctor and her warning about the police, Wilson urges her to tell Johnny to be careful: “There’s no room for mistakes. He must be trained to check his work, again, and again, and again…”

During this cross-purpose conversation, Mrs Barnes spots a photo of a girl on Wilson’s table, and helps herself to a piece of paper—presumably with contact details on it, as she then phones someone; although we do not know who for some time.

It is when Helen Grey (Virginia Maskell) turns up that we get most of Wilson’s story—or rather, Peter Watson’s story. We learn that he is a scientist; that he was doing government work; that there was terrible accident, during which his colleague, Helen’s brother, was killed, and that Watson himself suffered a head injury; and that while a subsequent inquiry cleared him, Watson was certain the accident was his own fault.

We also learn that it was after all this that Watson’s real problems began—after they tried to force him back to work—and after he was condemned as a coward for refusing…

The Man Upstairs never bothers to spell out what kind of work Watson was involved in. Clearly, by 1958, there was no need: only one branch of scientific research could drive a man to this sort of breakdown…

…all of which makes The Man Upstairs a fascinating companion-piece for Seven Days To Noon, both films dealing with the intolerable personal strain that came with atomic weapons research: something seen clearly enough in real life, where the mental, emotional and moral pressures involved were increased – often beyond the breaking-point of the individual – by the cruel fact that once someone had entered this branch of work, they weren’t allowed out again. In America, as we know, any attempt to escape, or any criticism of the work, was met with accusations of treason; in Britain, we gather, the accusation was rather one of cowardice. The end result tended to be the same.

And here, though in most ways these two British thrillers of the 1950s are so different – the one about a potential catastrophe, playing out all across London; the other a domestic drama about one man’s tragedy, set wholly within a boarding-house – Seven Days To Noon and The Man Upstairs finally come to the same conclusion: that no-one involved in the development of nuclear weapons can reasonably be expected to maintain their sanity.

Screenplay: Frank Harvey and Roy Boulting, based upon a story by Paul Dehn and James Bernard

Though their joint careers as producers, directors and writers extended over some four decades and embraced a variety of styles and genres, the twins John and Roy Boulting are best known for their excoriating portraits of post-war Britain. While for the most part the brothers leavened their distasteful dose with comedy, they played it straight in both of what are arguably their two best films: 1948’s Brighton Rock, widely considered the definitive British noir; and the 1950 thriller, Seven Days To Noon.

A letter received by the Prime Minister (Ronald Adam) is passed on to Superintendent Folland (André Morell) of the Special Branch: though he too assumes it is either a hoax or the work of a crank, he takes the precaution of contacting a certain government research laboratory. When he discovers that the apparent writer of the letter, a Professor Willingdon (Barry Jones), has not been seen since the previous day, Folland begins to take the letter seriously: he orders an inventory of the laboratory’s ordnance.

On site, Folland learns that Willingdon has not been at the laboratory since the middle of the previous day. In company with the Professor’s assistant, Stephen Lane (Hugh Cross), Folland visits Mrs Willingdon (Marie Ney) and her daughter, Ann (Sheila Manahan). They do not know where Willingdon is either but are unconcerned, as he often spends a night away; they furnish a recent description of his clothing and the bag he was probably carrying. As they leave, Folland tells Lane that he wants him to accompany him back to London. Lane agrees, but insists upon knowing what is going on. Folland then reveals that Willingdon has taken from the laboratory a nuclear device small enough to fit into the Gladstone bag he habitually carries; and that he has written to the Prime Minister insisting that, before noon the following Sunday, he announce that Britain will unilaterally disarm itself of nuclear weapons, and commit to not making any more—otherwise he, Willingdon, will detonate his device in the heart of London…

It is possible to watch Seven Days To Noon simply as a thriller, a chase film: from the discovery that Willingdon really has taken a bomb, its surface narrative divides between the efforts of the authorities to locate the rogue scientist, and Willingdon’s own efforts to remain uncaught while the seven days of his ultimatum play out. However, it is what is going on behind this familiar surface scenario that is so fascinating.

In the first place, there’s the film’s sense of “dislocation”, that is, the playing out of a genre we tend to think of as exclusively American not just in England, but literally upon the streets of London. The film was not only shot largely on location, but gets many of its effects from the combination of familiar, comforting landmarks and reminders of the war not so long ended, in buildings either missing altogether or still suffering from bombing damage. The film’s climax plays out in and around St Stephen’s, Westminster, which bears a sign asking for donations: Blitzed ten years ago, please help us rebuild. Furthermore, the producers somehow arranged for large sections of London to be cleared for the filming, resulting in numerous chilling shots of an empty and silent city.

The general attitude of Seven Days To Noon is also disturbing. British war films were always different in tone from their American counterparts, being more clear-eyed about the conflict, less inclined to wave flags and make speeches, far more willing to admit mistakes (proximity will do that); but this film takes it even further. There’s a suggestion here that whatever may have been gained by the war, something precious has been lost forever: perhaps a sense of right and wrong. There’s a hard, even a nasty edge to this film: not only does the evacuation of London prompt looting, but a looter is shot without warning; a soldier is seen helping himself to items from one of the houses he searches; while a loud-mouthed bar-fly coolly proposes a pre-emptive and unannounced nuclear strike upon the Soviet Union (people are aware of a war threat, but it occurs to no-one that the danger is home-grown).

(This film also deals bluntly with a particular horror of war that previously went largely unacknowledged: that those evacuated from London were forced to leave their pets behind. This detail is dwelt upon here, with many distressing shots of abandoned cats and dogs – and chickens. There is also a scene in London Zoo, where agitated animals left without their keepers pace as soldiers search the premises.)

Yet perhaps the most remarkable thing about Seven Days To Noon is its attitude to Willingdon. These days, with the voice of bitter experience, we’d call him a terrorist; even a suicide bomber, given that he clearly has no intention of surviving the detonation of the nuclear device (and in fact, given its design, cannot); but even in the more naïve time of this film’s production, the magnitude of the danger posed by Willingdon, and the necessity of finding and stopping him at any cost, is recognised and accepted from the first moments of the crisis.

Yet for all this, Seven Days To Noon allows itself to express a curious degree of sympathy for Willingdon—not for what he is doing, but for the circumstances that have driven him to this action. The “face of terror” in this film is that of a sad, frightened little man who has been pushed past the limits of his endurance.

It is initially assumed that there is an ideological basis for Willingdon’s actions, but in response to questioning on the point Lane asserts that he has “no politics” (most scientists don’t, in the sense of that question); furthermore, we learn that MI-5 has nothing on him.

(One intriguing touch is the detail that Willingdon is a graduate of Cambridge. Of course he would be, since that university’s specialty was maths and science; but given what we know now about the “Cambridge Spy Ring”, it adds an accidental note of Cold War espionage to the proceedings.)

From politics, Folland shifts to money, a suspicion that, “Someone put him up to it”; but as soon emerges, Willingdon’s motivation is far more personal.

Learning that he was the last person to see Willingdon before he disappeared, Folland calls upon the vicar, Mr Burgess (Wyndham Goldie), his friend, frequent chess-partner and confidante. Burgess has qualms over the latter, both as a friend and a minister, but convinced of the urgency of the matter, he admits that he had seen for several months that Willingdon was a very troubled man:

Burgess: “I think he’d lost faith. I think he had lost all the faith he once had in the value of what he was doing, and where it was leading us all. I wish I could have been more help to him, but he was so alone: isolated by the very nature of his work…”

Among the first things we learn about Willingdon is that he was a member of, “The British team to New Mexico” in 1943; so he’s been in this pressure cooker for seven years—having seen during that time, in Japan, the possible consequences of his work. The vicar further reveals that Willingdon asked him what he would do, if he became convinced that his life’s work was being put to “an evil purpose”.

Folland then questions Burgess as to whether, in his opinion, Willingdon’s mind had become “unbalanced”. The vicar declines to give an opinion on that point; however—

Burgess: “If it had, perhaps we’re to blame. After all, Folland, we placed this intolerable burden on his shoulders—and left him alone to deal with it.”

Meanwhile, Lane and Ann are getting their own answer to Folland’s question, having found a batch of Willingdon’s papers scrawled over with biblical quotations and, perhaps even more ominously, Milton’s Samson Agonistes:

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,Irrecoverably dark, total eclipseWithout all hope of day!

There is eventually a sympathy shift back the other way in Seven Days To Noon—yet it is not so much because of the overarching situation, as because of Willingdon’s mistreatment of an individual.

Upon reaching London, Willingdon first finds shelter in the furnished room of a Mrs Peckett (a startlingly young, albeit still middle-aged, Joan Hickson—with a cigarette dangling permanently from her lips and a household full of cats, although refreshingly without any accompanying suggestion of “crazy”). His tenure there is brief, however, because his nervous pacing and obvious state of extreme tension attract Mrs Peckett’s attention and raise her fears—not because of the actual crisis, but because the so-far oblivious newspapers are still concentrated upon the police’s failure to apprehend, “The Landlady Killer.”

Willingdon is next taken in by an over-the-hill showgirl, known only as “Goldie” (Olive Sloane), after her dog (a rather adorable King Charles spaniel) takes a liking to him. In one of this film’s more eyebrow-raising touches, it is clear that, having been rejected for a stage-job, Goldie is intending to supplement her coffers with a little amateur prostitution when she takes Willingdon home. He, however, is entirely oblivious to her overtures; and the next morning, Goldie is delighted to discover that she has nevertheless earned two pounds.

That day proves the crisis point for both of them, however. With the search for Willingdon having so far failed, the Prime Minister is forced both to explain the situation to the population at large, and to begin the evacuation of that area of London calculated to be in the danger zone should Willingdon detonate his device, as he has indicated he intends to do, at “the seat of government”, that is, Westminster.

(The very nature of the ultimatum allows time for this evacuation, although whether this was Willingdon’s intention, to minimise casualties, is left uncertain.)

At the same time, huge pictures of Willingdon are plastered all over the city—alerting Willingdon to the immediacy of his danger, and Goldie to the identity of her gentleman-caller.

Later they meet again, at her house, after she has told her story to the authorities. She returns to pack a few things for her own escape from London, only to find that Willingdon, with nowhere else to go, has taken refuge there. And he seizes her, holding her prisoner as the clock ticks down…

By Sunday, the evacuation is complete. The Prime Minister and the Cabinet are the last to leave. The danger-zone remains occupied only by the military forces detailed to conduct a minute and ever-more contracting search; by Folland and his Special Branch forces, who must stay even if / when the soldiers are released; and by Ann Willingdon and Stephen Lane: the former staying in the hope that, should they find him, she might still be able to talk her father out of it; the latter, conversely, because he might be able to disarm the device—if they find it in time…

Footnote: The device stolen by Willingdon lends something of a science-fiction touch to Seven Days To Noon, in that when the film was made, no devices that small had been developed. Now, however…

While we’re accustomed to Warner Bros. films that are cynical in outlook and disrespectful in tone, and which evince a healthy suspicion of authority, occasionally there was an exception that proved the rule. And when the producers did decide to be patriotic and/or sentimental—my goodness, they could lay it on with a shovel…

Such is the case with Knute Rockne All American, a fulsome yet superficial biopic of the great Notre Dame football coach. We have a pretty good idea of what we’re in for from the opening credits which, in addition to their slavish thanking of Notre Dame itself for its cooperation, assert that Robert Buckner’s screenplay is “based upon the private papers of Mrs Rockne, and the reports of Rockne’s intimate associates and friends”. We are not, therefore, expecting anything critical of Rockne or even just balanced—and we certainly don’t get it.

(Notre Dame’s grip on this production was absolute: the institution vetoed the casting of James Cagney as Rockne because he was on record as supporting the anti-Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War.)

From its opening scenes, Knute Rockne All American displays a great determination to leave no cliché undeployed. We follow the Rockne family from Norway to Chicago, where – as the right sort of immigrant, you understand – father Lars Rockne (John Qualen) secures a high-level, well-paying job with almost embarrassing ease, and young Knute (John Sheffield) discovers, in the streets of his new home-town, “The most wonderful game in the world!”

A swiftly passing montage has John Sheffield turning into Pat O’Brien, and shows him slaving away to earn enough money to put himself through college. He subsequently enrols at Notre Dame as a rather mature freshman…

…much more mature than was even the case. I gather that Pat O’Brien is both made up to look rather like Rockne, and does a good job of reproducing his staccato speech-pattern. However—he was forty-one when he was cast (two years younger than the real Rockne was at the time of his premature death), and the film makes no effort to disguise the fact, making the early scenes involving this “star college athlete” more than a little absurd. It doesn’t help that the film-makers lightened O’Brien’s hair to reflect Rockne’s Scandinavian background: it just looks like he’s going prematurely grey.

Anyway… There’s a reason – a distressingly brief reason – while this film qualifies for Science In The Reel World, and we might as well get it out of the way as quickly as the film does. Lost in the sands of history is the fact that when Knute Rockne enrolled at university, it was to undertake training in chemistry.

Even while building his football career, Rockne emerges as the star student of Father Julius Nieuwland (Albert Bassermann), Notre Dame’s professor of chemistry and botany. Father Nieuwland has high hopes of his protégé, and offers him a summer job as his own assistant in his efforts to develop a form of synthetic rubber. He suffers the first of many setbacks when Rockne apologetically declines, explaining that he has already committed to a summer job as a life-guard in company with his friend and roommate (and teammate), Charlie “Gus” Dorais (Owen Davis Jr): a job that allows Rockne and Dorais plenty of time to work on their football tactics…

Father Nieuwland does not give up, however, and when Rockne graduates – magna cum laude – he is again offered a job, this time as a teacher: a position he accepts on condition that he is allowed simultaneously to accept a post as assistant football coach; excusing himself via his need to earn enough to get married on. He starts out promising that he will only coach for a year, just long enough to get on his feet financially: “You don’t think I’m crazy enough to take up coaching as a life-work, do you?”

Knute Rockne All American does offer a few scenes of Rockne and Father Nieuwland at work in their chemistry laboratory, but we all know how the story ends; at least, we all know how Rockne’s story ends. Probably less well-known, though it shouldn’t be, is that Father Nieuwland’s research into acetylene eventually contributed to its use as the basis of a type of synthetic rubber, and paved the way for the development of neoprene by DuPont.

Not that anyone associated with this film was at all interested in that.

Having held his two jobs for three years, Rockne knows he must make a choice; and he turns for advice, or rather for absolution, to Father John Callahan, the President of Notre Dame (played by Donald Crisp at his most unctuous: Callahan is the film’s one overtly fictional character; I’m not sure of the significance of that). Callahan urges Rockne to take up whichever work is “closest to your heart”—and that’s the last we hear of science.

Sigh.

The rest of Knute Rockne All American is devoted to a dash through Rockne’s coaching career and his influence upon the game of football. The film follows him through his years of staggering success as Notre Dame’s head-coach and his introduction to the game of such innovations as the forward-pass-based offence and the backfield shift. It also shows him as a role-model not just for the young men he coached, but for young men all across America: propagating a personal code of honesty, clean-living and hard work.

And of course there are a few difficult times—most significantly, the game against Army in 1928, when – with the breaks beating the boys – Notre Dame was in danger of significant defeat. But not to worry: Rockne has just the dressing-room speech for the occasion…

Find a copy of Knute Rockne All American today and you’ll probably find Ronald Reagan’s image on the cover rather than Pat O’Brien’s—a tendency that gives no hint of the brevity of Reagan’s presence in the film. True enough it is, and sad enough, that George Gipp died at the age of only twenty-five, of a Streptococcal throat infection that led to pneumonia, just as he became Notre Dame’s first elected All-American. Whether he actually made his dying speech, in which he supposedly urged Knute Rockne to have his boys “win one for the Gipper”, or whether the story is apocryphal, is by this time beside the point. We would, however, hope that matters did not unfold as they are shown here, with Gipp’s family led away so that he can address his last words to his football coach.

By 1931, the rocky times have passed: so much so, that Knute is finally able to make good on a seventeen-year-old promise, and take his wife and children away to Florida for the winter. Even here, however, his commitments pursue him. Apologetically, he tells Bonnie (Gale Page) that he must break up his vacation and travel to California; though to make his absence as brief as possible, he proposes to travel by plane. He laughingly waves away Bonnie’s instinctive protest against air-travel…

Knute Rockne died on the 31st of March, 1931, when one of the wings of the Transcontinental and Western Air Fokker F-10 on which he was travelling broke up in flight; the plane dropped from the air and crashed near Bazaar, Kansas, killing all eight people on board. The scenes with which Knute Rockne All American concludes, in which it depicts the national outpouring of grief that followed Rockne’s death, are perhaps the most accurate aspect of the film.

Knute Rockne All American is generally regarded as one of the great films about sport, and in that respect it is indeed successful, capturing the early days of college football and the development of the game under Rockne’s revolutionary approach. The film uses newsreel footage of real games throughout, and while this is not exactly seamlessly blended with the studio-created football scenes (jersey numbers come and go, grounds change, and so on), in itself this footage is a fascinating time-capsule for those interested in the history of the game.

At the same time, as a biopic this is a profoundly unsatisfactory film, chiefly because it won’t admit to anything that might reflect poorly on Rockne or, by extension, Notre Dame. It won’t even admit that Rockne ever did anything, good or bad, not directly associated with Notre Dame itself—ignoring his years as a professional football player, for instance. The film is also so determined to put Rockne on a pedestal, it can hardly concede he ever made a mistake: the rocky patch preceding the famous Army game is there chiefly to set up the “Gipper” scene, after which Rockne is elevated to that pedestal once again. The result of all this is that the film’s version of Knute Rockne is two-dimensional platitude-spouter, rather than someone capable, through his shrewd thinking and forceful personality, of shaping both a sport and the men he coached.

There is no hint here of Rockne’s determination, while building a winning culture, equally to make Notre Dame football a financial success; or of his skilful manipulation of the sports media of the day, to the benefit of his team and himself; or of his own lucrative side-career as an advertising spokesman. Least of all is there any reference to the fact that the proud educational institution of Notre Dame paid its football coach $75,000 a year: at the time, an unprecedented sum.

Though it ends, as noted, with Rockne’s death, Knute Rockne All American precedes its concluding tragedy with a scene in which Rockne is called to testify before a committee investigating the shocking allegations that college athletes are being given financial incentives—and even worse, a soft ride through their academic requirements. Rockne not merely rebuts these allegations, at least as far as his athletes are concerned, but gives a stirring speech about football’s many benefits to America: its building of character and teamwork, how it prevents “softness” in young men, how it provides a safe outlet for “combativeness”. Rockne expands upon this last point—informing the Committee that America doesn’t have wars or revolutions because, unlike in Europe, its young men play football.

(There’s not just only one kind of football in this film, there’s practically only one kind of sport.)

Now—while much of this is self-evidently ludicrous, something very interesting – and very sneaky – is going on here. In the years leading up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Warners fought a constant battle against America’s isolationist position, with greater and lesser degrees of success: sometimes bringing the wrath of Washington down upon itself, sometimes successfully reaching the public with its message.

And in this climactic scene, it slowly becomes evident that Knute Rockne All American is – or is being used as – another of Warners’ “preparedness” films. It is not by accident that the studio chose to make this film during 1940; and this scene, which overtly offers football as an alternative to war, is actually selling football as a preparation for war: a way of ensuring that America’s young men are fit, well-drilled, able to work in teams and used to following orders—so that they’re ready when the call inevitably comes…

But while it is not without these flashes of interest, I have to say that, overall, I find Knute Rockne All American a bit tiresome—and very artificial. That’s just me, though: I know many others find it inspiring. And in fairness to this film, I need to point out that something else is operating here: the fact that, not so long ago, I became aware of College Coach, which – although it came first – could fairly be considered this film’s evil twin: another Warners production that also deals with college football, and also casts Pat O’Brien as an influential football coach—but which is in all other respects as distant from Knute Rockne All American as it is possible for any film to be.

Knute Rockne All American now feels like—not merely a rejection of, but an apology for, College Coach: going as far in the opposite direction as is possible, and replacing the earlier film’s sneering, cynical attitude towards college sport with a blinkered sanctimony that is, quite frankly, just as hard to swallow—if not harder. I ended my review of College Coach by admitting that it made me feel a little sick; so too does Knute Rockne All American—just in a very different way…

Footnote:Pat O’Brien completed the triumvirate by starring in 1943’s The Iron Major, a low-budget biopic depicting the life and career of football coach Frank Cavanagh. It is a film very much on the Knute Rockne side of the scale…

Screenplay: Niven Busch and Rian James, based upon a story by Niven Busch and Samuel G. Engel

In the mid-1930s, Warners made several films dealing with out-of-work gangsters figuring out their next move in the wake of the repeal of Prohibition – or as ‘Dutch’ Barnes (Ricardo Cortez) sees it, “The Government muscling in on our racket” – but while the majority of them make this situation the basis for a comedy (for example, in A Slight Case Of Murder starring Edward G. Robinson), 1934’s The Big Shakedown plays it more or less straight.

The film opens with the goons in Barnes’ employ trying and failing to get their brand of beer into the old neighbourhood outlets: the customers are no longer intimidated, the cops are no longer on the take—and the beer is awful. Barnes finds himself with two useless breweries on his hands and a splitting headache. He heads for a neighbourhood drugstore owned by young pharmacist, Jimmy Morrell (Charles Farrell), who runs it with the help of his fiancée, Norma Nelson (Bette Davis).

Morrell explains that he has no supply of the headache powder favoured by Barnes, but that he can quickly mix him up something just as good; in fact, identical. This catches Barnes’ attention and, flattered by his interest, Morrell expands upon his point—claiming that he has the professional skills to reproduce a great many products at a cut price, and so giving Barnes an idea for a whole new racket…

In short, Barnes moves into the counterfeiting business—packaging Jimmy’s knock-offs as the real thing, in order to take advantages of the genuine companies’ advertising, and then resorting to the same old strongarm tactics to get them into the drug stores.

Science per se plays a relatively small role in The Big Shakedown, though it does offer a fascinating if fleeting glimpse into the state of the pharmaceutical industry at the time—having some rather biting things to say about mark-ups and profit-margins; while the fact that Jimmy can and does whip up products just as good as those marketed by the major companies speaks for itself. The difference, the film implies, is not the quality of the goods but merely the size of the advertising budget.

Meanwhile, though one of the film’s main characters is a scientist, he’s not exactly a credit to his profession. In fact, this film functions as an examination of just how stupid one man can be while still being sufficiently bright to qualify as a pharmacist. There are a few brief but enjoyable scenes of Jimmy Morrell busy in the compounding laboratory at the back of his drugstore, and (inevitably) among his test tubes and flasks; but Jimmy himself rapidly becomes so thoroughly exasperating, it gets harder and harder to take an interest.

There is typical Warners cynicism in the step-wise destruction of Jimmy, who is – to put it mildly – not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. It takes him forever to grasp what Dutch Barnes is really asking of him, and his token protest is soon drowned by Dutch’s fast-talking and his promises of easy money. Struggling to hold his business in the face of a threat from a large chain, and unable to afford to marry Norma, Jimmy is soon swayed—making all the obvious excuses to himself: that he only makes the products, it’s not his business what Dutch does with them; that no-one is really getting hurt; that Norma deserves the best he can give her.

These arguments work so long as Dutch is only demanding harmless items like toothpaste and cold cream and perfume; but when he gets it into his head to counterfeit the country’s best, and best-selling, antiseptic, Jimmy baulks—explaining that the success of ‘Odite’ is due to a proprietary ingredient which he cannot reproduce. That’s okay as far as Dutch is concerned: “We’ll make the first antiseptic without any antiseptic.”

It takes the stick-and-carrot of threats and payment to make Jimmy give in on this one, but give in he does – marrying Norma on the proceeds of his “bonus” – so it is hardly surprising that Dutch feels confident in moving on to another, still more contentious product: counterfeit digitalis…

When Jimmy’s production-line expands to include Odite, the plot of The Big Shakedown opens up likewise. The company that makes the antiseptic and the creator of the product, Mr Sheffner (Henry O’Neill), decide to take legal action again Dutch’s own company when they gain a valuable witness in the form of Dutch’s discarded moll, Lil Duran (Glenda Farrell). Realising who must be talking, Dutch decides – literally – to kill two birds with one stone, eliminating Lil while making Jimmy an unknowing accessory to murder. The loss of their key witness causes the lawsuit fall apart, forcing Odite into bankruptcy and destroying Mr Sheffner’s life’s work. Meanwhile, Norma develops complications in her pregnancy—including a heart-condition that may require treatment with digitalis…

The Big Shakedown is a strange film. Its subject matter is serious enough, but there is often a facetious note about the proceedings that feels out of place.This is particularly so in the scenes featuring the “marketing” of first product in the new venture, wherein meek little druggists are cowed into buying cases more toothpaste than they could possibly sell, and Dutch’s goons, pressed into declaring whether they can tell the difference between the real Polydent and Jimmy’s counterfeit, protest having to clean their teeth at all.

Meanwhile, Jimmy is such an idiot that it is impossible to feel any sympathy for him, and we are left to wonder what on earth Norma sees in him—not least because she’s played by a young Bette Davis.

This was in fact one of the thankless B-films that Warners continued to force upon Davis even after her Academy Award nomination for Of Human Bondage, and was a factor in her decision to run away to England in a desperate attempt to break her contract. She’s wasted here as Norma, though her performance is unsurprisingly one of the better things about the film. That said, she does her best work opposite everyone but Charles Farrell, which suggests that she too found the central relationship unconvincing. In fact, the suggestion that Norma would or could just forgive and forget, after all the misery and loss Jimmy’s actions cause her, is rather insulting; while Jimmy’s end-of-film exoneration is not merely insulting, but absurd. We appreciate that this is just a B-film and they need to wrap things up; but still…

By the skin of its teeth, The Big Shakedown was a pre-Code picture; and to this we may attribute not only Jimmy’s final free pass, but the fact that another character gets away with murder. Conversely, we note that even in these relatively free times, a woman (even a married woman) was not allowed to look pregnant: Norma’s flat abdomen, as she lies in her hospital bed “in labour”, is another moment of absurdity.

A possible point of contention here is the running gag provided by Sidney Miller as a Jewish kid from the neighbourhood, which has a distinct whiff about it. However, it’s obvious nothing unkind was really intended, so YMMV.

And while the pickings overall are slim, thankfully The Big Shakedown does offer some wry and even daring touches in its marginalia, and it is here that it is at its most entertaining: Dutch’s pained realisation that the days of beer and roses are over; his goon, Lefty (Allen Jenkins), misunderstanding the plan to move into “the drug racket” and likewise, later on, “toilet water”; Lil’s slang-riddled testimony to the District Attorney, and his secretary’s bewildered reaction as she tries to take the deposition; and best of all, the moment when a middle-aged male customer enters the drugstore to purchase a certain item…but changes his mind about asking for it when he finds a woman behind the counter…

Footnote: There’s no advertising art associated with The Big Shakedown showing Jimmy doing SCIENCE!!, so I’ve had to append a screenshot. Likewise, the only lobby card with Bette has her looking exactly as miserable as she no doubt was making this, so – following the same logic I used with respect to College Coach – I’ve gone instead with one showing Jimmy getting the snot beaten out of him.

Synopsis:At a naval air station in San Diego, a young sailor named McVey (Troy Donahue) arrives to claim the single passenger seat on an eastbound jet, bumping an officer from the flight. However, when the latter hears that the jet is to be piloted by Commander Dale Heath (Efrem Zimbalist Jr), he gladly surrenders it—wryly wishing McVey good luck. The clerk explains to the alarmed McVey that, three years before, Heath was involved in a mid-air collision in which he manoeuvred to save himself; three men on a light bomber were killed. As he prepares for his flight to Washington, Dale Heath discusses the state of their marriage with his wife, Cheryl (Rhonda Fleming). An unhappy military wife, Cheryl is also a serial adulterer; however, Heath tells her he does not want a divorce: he believes in sticking to the jobs he takes on. Heath’s compensation is his teenage daughter, Anne (Karen Green), to whom he is devoted in spite of the long absences that are a necessary part of his duty. Anne reveals that she knows his new mission will see him based in Washington for flights to the Mediterranean, and confides that she wants to attend boarding-school in Washington, to be near him. When Heath mentions Cheryl, Anne comments bitterly that her mother won’t care… Seen off by Cheryl and Anne, Heath explains to a nervous McVey the rules of the air that will keep them both safe. McVey hesitates, then asks about the mid-air collision. Heath admits that while the B66 was at the wrong altitude, the collision was his own fault: he was remembering his service in Korea and, at the moment of emergency, responded as if in a combat situation. Heath then asks McVey if he still wants to fly with him? McVey says simply that he must get home… In Washington, First Officer Mike Rule (John Kerr) and his stewardess-girlfriend, Kitty Foster (Anne Francis), travel by taxi to the airport. Kitty tells Mike about the rest of the crew; he reacts strangely when he hears that the captain will be Dick Barnett (Dana Andrews). At that moment, Barnett is in the office of the head of Trans State Airlines, Joseph Bruce (Ed Prentiss), refusing an offer of a promotion to Operations Manager: he says flatly that he doesn’t want a desk job. As he goes to leave, Bruce tells him that there was a mix-up about the crew scheduling, and that his First Officer will be Mike Rule… The flight crew works out their route, noting expected rough weather over Abilene; Flight Engineer Louis Capelli (Joe Mantell) warns Barnett that the previous crew on their plane had trouble getting the nose wheel down and locked. As Barnett and Capelli leave to check the wheel, Kitty questions Mike about the obvious tension between himself and Barnett. Mike avoids a direct answer, saying only that though they were once friends and colleagues, these days Barnett hates his guts. However, despite these technical and personal issues, the flight is boarded and takes off without incident, its path direct to Los Angeles… Meanwhile, as his jet approaches Phoenix, Heath discovers that he has trouble with his radio, which is giving him only broken and uninterpretable transmissions from air-traffic control…

Comments:The year 1960 gave audiences a strange and intriguing pair of disaster movies: The Last Voyage, which offers the highest disaster-to-running-time ratio of any disaster movie I have ever seen; and The Crowded Sky, which offers perhaps the lowest disaster-to-running-time ratio of any disaster movie I’ve ever seen.

In fact – in a 105-minute movie – the actual disaster in The Crowded Sky occupies perhaps 15 seconds of screentime, with its consequences and resolution occupying a mere 7 minutes more.

(It is also largely executed via some extremely dodgy model-work, which I found hard to take this time around, in the aftermath of a viewing of The Last Voyage’s hyper-realism.)

And yet no-one watching The Crowded Sky would dream of classifying it as anything other than a disaster movie. In this, it acts as the perfect illustration of my seemingly reductive definition of a disaster movie as “a movie about a disaster”, inasmuch as the 93 minutes that precede this film’s 15-second disaster exist purely in order to get us to that moment.

And not only in this way is The Crowded Sky a textbook disaster movie; far from it. If The Last Voyage gets its effects from stretching the formula as far as it could go, The Crowded Sky is so narrowly formulaic, at times it feels like an early, unacknowledged parody of its genre: a kind of dry run for Flying High!

In this respect, The Crowded Sky also serves to illustrate the rapidity with which the modern disaster movie – born only in 1954, with The High And The Mighty – became an often ridiculous compendium of tropes and clichés.

Make no mistake: with its domination by – groan – “character scenes”, its plethora of over-familiar subplots and its painfully heavy-handed direction, The Crowded Sky is sometimes hard going; yet at the same time, it is not entirely without value as a disaster movie, however brief the disaster in question; while it also carries within it some moments that make it very clear that the heavy hand of the Production Code was at long last losing its grip. If, overall, the film’s focus upon s-e-x occasionally feels a little puerile, the matter-of-fact way in which the screenplay presents the sexual misconduct of both its leading ladies, and the non-judgemental way in which their respective stories are handled, signal a welcome new maturity.

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The Crowded Sky wastes no time intimating just what sort of film we’re in for. Once its block-letters-zooming-towards-the-viewer credits, carrying within them the promise of the sort of reliable ensemble cast disaster-movie fans had already been taught to expect, are out of the way, we are introduced to a young sailor named McVey, running late for his hitched flight from San Diego to Washington. His arrival bumps an officer from the flight in question—though the latter is only too happy to give up his seat when he hears that “the El Toro guy” would have been his pilot.

(“El Toro” is a reference to the El Toro air station in Orange County, which until its decommission in 1999 was the west-coast home of US Marine Corps aviation.)

McVey questions the clerk, who tells him that his pilot, Commander Dale Heath, was involved in a mid-air collision three years earlier, in which three air-force personnel were killed. Nevertheless, Heath’s flight is the only one heading to Washington that day, so McVey has no choice.

Meanwhile, Heath himself is at home, getting dressed—while his slip-clad wife lounges in their bed, smoking and regarding him with rather mocking amusement.

I may say I was surprised on this viewing of The Crowded Sky to learn that Rhonda Fleming’s character is called “Cheryl”—pronounced with a hard ‘CH’, which I’ve never encountered before – is that common in America? – and had previously misheard as “Charro”.

Be that as it may, Fleming surely never looked more beautiful than she does here—the camera’s lingering love-making interesting in light of her Bad Girl role. Indeed, the subsequent conversation between Cheryl and her husband rubs the viewer’s nose in the former’s misbehaviour. We learn that Heath caught her (the term is used) “in flagrante delicto”, and that subsequently – on the advice of her lawyer – she re-seduced her husband in order to ward off any threat of divorce proceedings. (Cheryl uses the term for that, too, “Condonation.”)

To her surprise, Heath says flatly that he doesn’t want a divorce; that he believes in sticking with the jobs he takes on—even if it’s, “A rotten job.”

Via a series of flashbacks – The Crowded Sky almost drowns in that particular disaster-movie cliché – we trace the early days of the relationship between Cheryl and Heath: their obsessive relationship during his time at the Naval Academy, where Cheryl exploited her privileged position as the daughter of a Rear Admiral; Heath’s eagerness for marriage tempered by his realisation that this would mean he would be expelled from the academy—and Chery’s retaliatory announcement of her pregnancy; and their subsequent compromise of a delayed marriage, to allow for Heath’s graduation, in exchange for an academy-chapel wedding.

A leap of some years finds the couple, a very young Anne in the backseat of their car, passing through Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico—which Cheryl takes as a sign. She admits then that the pregnancy was a fake (we gather she faked a miscarriage, too), though she adds that Heath ought to be flattered by her determination to catch him. It’s a choice she has come to regret, however, and she presents Heath with an ultimatum: up until now she has been faithful in spite of endless opportunities to be otherwise during his numerous absences; but if he enlists to serve in Korea as he is thinking of doing, she won’t be waiting patiently at home…

He did—and she didn’t. This adds an intriguing shading to Cheryl’s Bad Girl persona, as her subsequent serial adultery is shown as quite as much about lashing out at Heath as Cheryl’s own pleasure and amusement. It is something she has kept up to the present day, her inability to play the role of “navy wife” only increasing over time.

(We know, of course, that in addition to Heath’s war-service and other duty-absences, there has been the matter of the mid-air collision, Heath’s escape from death, and the fallout from the incident.)

Yet this too has its consequences: in another welcome touch, the screenplay separates Cheryl’s sexual conduct from her general honesty; and she is honest enough about herself to know that Anne would be better off without her—even though the girl represents her own best chance of holding Heath. It is Anne’s wish to attend to attend boarding-school – “To get away from me,” Cheryl comments, not without bitterness; although in fact it is chiefly to allow her to see as much of her father as possible, once he has begun his new assignment of Mediterranean flights from a base in Washington. Knowing that this arrangement would be best for Anne, Cheryl agrees to her going.

Immediately prior to his departure for Washington, Heath collects thirteen-ish Anne from her school and takes her out to lunch. And it is Anne who wins – or “wins” – the perverse privilege of a first instance of what is, of all of them, is The Crowded Sky’s most crass and annoying tic: a zoom-in close-up followed by a voiceover internal monologue, something employed here to the point of absurdity.

As the camera zooms in this first time, we hear Anne’s resentful inner voice: “Mother’s so wrong for you! She keeps trying to rip you apart! Why’d you ever marry her?”

(Small wonder Flying High! mocked this: “Jim never vomits at home!”)

Cheryl and Anne see Heath off from the air-base, the latter waving a wistful farewell. Heath greets McVey, who has never flown in a jet before, and tries to soothe his obvious nervousness by explaining flight procedure to him: that eastbound flights like theirs fly at an odd altitude, in this case 21,000 feet; whereas westbound flights fly at an even altitude, 22,000 or 20,000 feet, as the case may be; with ten minutes’ flying time front and back, in addition to the thousand feet either way, and tracking by air-traffic control.

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Less encouraging is Heath’s explanation of eject procedure. Invited to ask questions, McVey hesitates, but then brings up Heath’s accident record. He hesitates in turn, then admits his culpability: that while the bomber was at the wrong altitude, he had been distracted, thinking about his war service—and he reacted as he would have done in combat, pulling up so that the bomber struck his underside and he was able to eject, rather than sacrificing himself by diving into the underside of the bomber, as he should have done.

In response, McVey says only that he has get home; answering Heath’s inquiry, “Trouble?” with a sombre, “Yes, sir.”

With Heath in the air, The Crowded Sky shifts east to Washington D.C., and to what is – Cheryl Heath’s general conduct notwithstanding – the most eyebrow-raising aspect of the film: the character of Kitty Foster, who introduces herself casually as, “The ex-champ of tramps.” She says this in the course of demanding to know why Mike Rule won’t marry her, when everyone knows ex-tramps make the best wives. Besides, there’s what she learned at stewardess school:

Kitty: “Where else would you get a wife trained to sit, kneel, bend and squat so charmingly?”

That line pretty much sets the tone for most of Kitty’s dialogue, which is liberally peppered with double-entendres—when she bothers with the double. But while this is undoubtedly another example, during the studios’ war with television, of a film taking advantage of the comparative freedom of the movie-screen, Kitty is much more than the familiar stereotype of the sex-kitten stewardess; while her relationship with Mike Rule is likewise far more complex than the usual stewardess / pilot hook-up.

As with the Heaths, we get Mike and Kitty’s first meeting via flashback, with the former waking up with a crushing hangover in the latter’s bed—albeit fully dressed except for his shoes. Kitty treats Mike’s hangover matter-of-factly, pours black coffee into him, and fills him in on the fuzzy details of his previous evening’s bender.

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Mike, however, is focused upon a portrait of Kitty hanging on the wall—something he painted, though he’s sure they’ve never met before, and which she acquired from a local gallery. Kitty herself bemuses him even more by cross-questioning him about his father, the much-married and highly eccentric artist, Noah Rule. Mike corrects her misapprehension by explaining that while Noah painted hundreds of works, he destroyed all but four of them before he died—then invites her on a light-plane trip to see all four.

Kitty is game—even when Mike lays down some ground-rules: he has ambitions to be an artist himself; he is working as a pilot to earn enough to take several years off and find out if he’s kidding himself about that; and has no intention of acquiring responsibilities such as a wife and children.

Kitty calmly retaliates with some ground rules of her own, informing him that firstly, they didn’t sleep together, and secondly, that they’re not going to; that she’s an ex-tramp – now reformed – with (so to speak) a hair-trigger, which can be set off just by kissing; so there won’t be any kissing, either…

And on this rigidly platonic footing, the two set out to visit the life’s work of Noah Rule: two paintings in San Francisco museums, one mural on the wall of a Texas post office, one painting in the possession of a wealthy Texas widow.

By the time they’ve got to Texas, and to Noah’s Depression-era mural of the breadlines, Mike is comfortable enough with Kitty to ask about her reformation—and she comfortable enough with him to tell him the truth: that one of her affairs led to pregnancy, and the offer of an abortion; that instead she carried the child to term, though knowing she would have to give it up for adoption; and that those managing the situation not only refused to let her see her baby, they wouldn’t even tell her its sex; nor has she even been able to find out.

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And that was that: the ex-champ of tramps.

The final stop on their art-hop is Dallas, at the home of a Mrs Mitchell, who owns what is considered the jewel of Noah Rule’s tiny output—but claims she has forgotten how she came to own it. By now Kitty has seen enough to recognise Noah’s in-painting signature, that none of his living beings, human or animal, have faces; so quite as much as Mike, she is startled when she sees on another wall what can only be a fifth surviving work by Noah Rule.

For Mike, however, the painting has a greater significance—and he demands to know which wife Mrs Mitchell was? The second, she admits (Mike’s mother was #5); and goes on to break some shattering news: that Noah isn’t dead, as Mike was told, but in a mental hospital, catatonic.

It was Mike’s mother who sold the unknown fifth painting to the now-Mrs Mitchell, in order to pay for Noah’s care; the two women agreed that Mike should not be told the truth about his father. He is being told now, Mrs Mitchell adds, because Noah is painting again – painting Mike – although not his face…

Mike and Kitty’s next stop is Noah’s asylum (“We prefer ‘sanctuary’,” insists the old man’s unctuous and toothy attendant), but the visit is not a success—the attendant explaining apologetically that he doesn’t know where Noah got those matches… But, he adds, if Mike has gotten through to his father, Noah will look back as they leave.

But he doesn’t.

Kitty is shrewd enough to see that there are reasons beyond those declared for Mike’s rejection of marriage and fatherhood. She realises too that, in some way, the meeting with Noah, however hurtful in some ways, has affected Mike’s own thinking.

..

By the time they’re back home, Kitty has changed her mind—and fully intends to overcome Mike’s own resistance and marry him. She is perversely delighted – knowing herself as she does – to discover that she can kiss Mike and not “blast off”; and though her kisses have quite a different effect on him, the ex-champ shuts her door firmly in his face…

…leaving Mike caught between his two worlds and two ambitions: to be an artist, free of emotional encumbrances and responsibilities; and to be a pilot, married and a father. He is still (despite Kitty’s campaigning) sticking to his first plan when he is assigned the flight to Los Angeles—and Dick Barnett as his captain.

Barnett, meanwhile, is rejecting a desk job offered by the head of the airline, insisting that his only ambition to hit ten million flying miles. That achieved, he might reconsider. As he turns to leave, his boss tells him apologetically that due to a mix-up, his First Officer on his next flight will be Mike Rule…

This triggers what is – thank God! – the final set of lengthy flashbacks in The Crowded Sky, with most of the other characters forced to expressed themselves via interior monologue or – less frequently – by actually responding to their immediate circumstances.

But first we have to wade through Dick Barnett’s own memory-stream: the birth of his only child, and his manoeuvring to have the boy named “Dick Jr”; his friendship with – and mentorship of – a young Mike Rule; the crumbling of his relationship with his son, partly because of the death of his wife, the boy’s mother, partly because of his own determination to turn Dick Jr into a pilot, whether he likes it or not (he doesn’t), and partly because of his own perfectionism, and the demands he makes on others.

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Though much of this is familiar (Barnett is the same stick-up-the-butt type as Gary Merrill’s Steve Williams in Crash Landing), there are two moments worth noting. The first is when, in the car on the way to his mother’s funeral, young Dick turns to Mike for comfort rather than to his father—who can do no better than a stiff inquiry as to whether his mother would want him crying like that over her? (The boy, bless his obstinate, grieving heart, responds with an emphatic, “YES!”) We understand that whatever happened later between Barnett and Mike, it had its roots in the former’s jealousy.

The other startling moment is Dick Jr’s teenage rebellion, when he becomes one of a group – gang? – caught vandalising a house. This is a weird, split-visioned moment, hanging on the precipice between the 50s and 60s: the kids themselves are rather unconvincingly dressed-down, and despite that clearly the children of privileged suburbia; yet according to the police, they’ve been guilty of breaking and entering, trashing the house in question, and unspecified activities that required, “Pushing the mattresses together.” Barnett is one of the mortified parents summoned to the scene.

We’ve already heard from Mike than it was Barnett who prevented him from making captain; yet another flashback reveals the circumstances: a conversation at a rather drunken poker-game, wherein Barnett gave his “unofficial” opinion of Mike’s unfitness for promotion, knowing full well how it would be taken—the “official” grounds being that, given his artistic ambitions, Mike is insufficiently dedicated to his job.

Much later, Mike explains to Kitty that it wasn’t Barnett’s prevention of his promotion that bothered him: it was that he enjoyed doing it. As Mike understood very well, Barnett’s intervention had nothing to do with his art, and everything to do with his relationship with Dick Jr.

Not, however, that any of that mattered, once he’d planted his fist in Barnett’s face…

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(It was Mike’s post-fight bender that introduced him to Kitty, so the night wasn’t all bad.)

Following the poker-table incident, careful scheduling kept Barnett and Mike apart: this flight to Los Angeles is the first in years for the former friends who once, “Flew a million miles together.”

The Crowded Sky does not present its flashbacks as coherently as (I hope!) I have done, but intercuts them with the present-day action over the first hour and a half of the film. Meanwhile, the various other subplots begin making themselves felt. All of these derive from the film’s lengthy source novel, where they are worked out in full; here, they are given very short shrift (if perhaps not short enough).

There’s the maudlin: Dr Benedict and his wife, the latter of whom has a serious heart condition, but doesn’t yet know (if you guessed that by the end of the film she’ll have found out the hard way, give yourself a gold star); the sentimental: lonely middle-agers Sidney Schreiber and Beatrice Wiley, too scared and shy even to speak to one another, until disaster strikes (we’ve seen this before, also in Crash Landing, though I suspect Marty may be the immediate influence); and the embarrassing: woman-scorned Gloria Panawek accidentally reunited with former lover, TV-writer Nick Hyland who, without recognising her, starts putting the same old moves on her…

(That the worst person in this film works in television speaks for itself. However, the casting of Keenan Wynn – and that stupid moustache! – as a tom-catting TV-writer is beyond ridiculous.)

Meanwhile, in the here-and-now, exasperated agent Gertrude Ross is escorting her twitchy, self-absorbed method-actor protégé, Bob Fermi, from Broadway to Hollywood (I’ve seen references to Brando, but to my eyes Tom Gilson is “doing” Dennis Hopper); while lone passenger Samuel N. Poole exchanges ominous looks with Barnett to the point that we begin to suspect he’s here to do something stupidly dangerous and make the disaster exponentially worse, à la Sidney Blackmer in The High And The Mighty, but whose back-story turns out to be boring and quite unnecessary. (If it’s supposed to make us think Barnett is a nice person, mission not accomplished.)

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And – in a subplot both hilariously obvious and wonder-of-wonders relevant – young air-traffic controller Norm Coster has a wife who has been experiencing stop-start labour pains for forty-six hours, to no good end, while he hasn’t slept for fifty-two…

And with all that finally out of the way, we may at last be able to concentrate on THE ACTUAL PLOT!!!!

At the airport in Washington, the flight crew meets to plot their route and discuss any potential problems, which include a suspect nose-wheel and anticipated bad weather. Kitty is immediately alert to the tension between Mike and Barnett, not least because of Mike’s use of “Captain”, when everyone else just says “Dick”.

The passengers board, and Kitty (sign of the times) checks their tickets after they’ve taken their seats: this is where the internal monologues start in painful earnest. Up in the cockpit, the crew do their pre-flight check, periodically interrupted by Flight Engineer Louis Capelli’s stream of ugly stories about his monstrous wife—

—which in themselves are tacky in the extreme, but which with hindsight we are forced to forgive: when he is called out by the perceptive Mike, Capelli admits that he adores his wife, so much so he must force himself to think of her as a monster, or he’d never be able to leave her to do his job…

Barnett, meanwhile, calls out Mike:

Barnett: “If you have to call me ‘Captain’, say it, don’t spit it.”

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He’s still spitting it, however, when he points out that Barnett is flying 500 feet above their assigned altitude (that is, at 20,500 feet). Barnett justifies it as making a smoother flight for the passengers and dismisses Mike’s reprimand, pointing out that he is in charge.

Such are matters with Trans States 17 when we return to Navy Jet 8-255. Heath is slightly alarmed when a radio transmission lets him know that there is another jet in his vicinity—and more than a little alarmed when his transmissions start breaking up. The other jet does cut across in front of 255, but fortunately at a good safe distance. Heath goes back to trying to fix the radio, but with no success. He tells McVey that they should be safe as long as they stick to their flight plan; change it at all, and, well…

To try and take McVey’s mind off things, Heath starts to talk to him about the Naval Academy. McVey presents a case – purely theoretical, of course – wherein the academy found out a cadet had a wife— “They’d boot him out,” says Heath. “No ifs, ands, or buts.”

Which has the effect of shutting McVey up again. (And triggering a lengthy flashback, but we’ve already gone there…)

Back on TS-17, we get our first intimation that something may be not quite right with Engine #2: both Barnett and Capelli will subsequently check on it. Kitty calls for Mike’s assistance in the galley. As soon as he’s gone, Capelli asks Barnett why Mike hates his guts? – to which Barnett replies only, “Because I kept him from making captain.” Mike, when Kitty asks why Barnett hates his guts, is more forthcoming, at least to us (ibid.).

Flashback done, Mike returns to the cockpit—and points out that Barnett is still 500 feet over altitude; this time threatening to report him if he doesn’t go down. For a moment it seems like he’s going to follow through, too—until he decides that management wouldn’t take his word over Barnett’s: “Seniority’s such a sacred cow.” Barnett smirks, and keeps the plane right where it is.

..

Meanwhile, 255 succeeds in getting a clear signal from El Paso, with full landing instructions, to the relief of both on board. A sudden blast of ice-crystals inside the jet startles McVey, but Heath only laughs, explaining that he was so focused on the radio, he forgot to use the heater to clear the pressure system.

In other words—he got distracted again…

At El Paso, Heath and McVey get something to eat; Heath checks their proposed route, also noting the rough weather expected over Abilene; while a muttered line here about their vector informs us that they’re on the same flight-path as TS-17…if not at the same altitude.

McVey then builds up the nerve to say what he’s been busting to say all along: that’s he’s gotten his girlfriend pregnant, that she wants him to marry her, that he really wants to attend the Naval Academy, and what should he do? Heath, evidently a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do kind of guy, tells McVey that in spite of everything he should on no account marry his girlfriend—unless he really loves her, which McVey admits he does not.

(The film backs this scene with a soft playing – tacitly through the dining-room speakers – of the famous theme from A Summer Place, which hadn’t been released when this started filming. Warners lucked out there: the film was a smash, briefly making a star out of Troy Donahue; so was its theme, which spent a good chunk of 1960 on top of the Billboard charts.)

The conversation is briefly interrupted by a technician, who has checked the radio. He tells Heath that the relay was faulty due to moisture, but that it’s fine now. Nevertheless, before they take off again Heath checks in with the tower, and is relieved to get a good strong signal.

..

Back down on the ground, at Midland Centre air-traffic control, word comes that Norm and Sally Coster’s baby is finally on the way for real. Norm begs his manager for relief, but he points out that they’re already short-handed, and if Norm takes a break someone will have to handle three sectors. Norm reluctantly accepts this, but is tempted away from his post when his eager but inexperienced colleague, Rocky, insists that he can cope for a while.

On TS-17, Barnett and Mike are checking their scope for the predicted rough weather over Abilene; Barnett plots a detour to the south that should keep things as smooth as possible. He then leaves the cockpit, partly for coffee, partly to check on #2 engine—warning Mike before he goes not to alter the plane’s altitude.

To the west, Heath tries putting in his first call to Midland Centre, only to discover that the radio is playing up again; in fact, it is altogether out of order. More in hope than expectation, Heath keeps calling for an altimeter reading, explaining to McVey that the radio, the navigation and altimeter all work together – or not – and that without an accurate altimeter, the plane will inevitably begin to drop; though there is no way of telling how much.

McVey is for turning back to El Paso, but Heath tells him that going on is standard procedure. He also explains that their best chance is to switch their IFF system to its emergency setting: when this is picked up by Abilene, they will relay a message to Midland Centre, where a air-traffic controller should be able to see what the problem is and broadcast an altimeter setting over the omni-receiver.

Of course—all this depends upon the air-traffic controller being alert and quick-thinking…

..

And most unexpectedly, that’s more or less what happens: Norm is back at his post when the call comes from Abilene, and he immediately deduces radio trouble. Asked about altitude, Abilene reports that the jet is at approximately 20,000 feet, one thousand below where it should be. It is Rocky who theorises that the pilot is probably listening to his omni-receiver, and that they can reach him that way.

And they do: Norm sends an urgent message for the jet to climb immediately, as well as the necessary altimeter setting. Heath pulls up, the jet plunging into the thick cloud banks over Abilene.

Norm and Rocky then check their main scope, noting the appearance on it of the jet’s emergency beacon—and also the presence of Trans State 17.

Norm sends a message direct to TS-17, warning them of 255’s presence and ordering the plane dropped immediately to 18,000 feet. Barnett responds as quickly as he can—except, of course, he has to drop the plane, not 2,000 feet, but 2,500 feet—

—which means that as TS-17 descends and 255 ascends through the thick cloud over Abilene, they find each other…

The Crowded Sky is a peculiar movie—and an even more peculiar disaster movie. It is a long film with a short disaster, which is dealt with in an oddly prosaic manner, free of the genre’s usual ramped-up melodrama. We may fairly ask whether it is worth sitting through the rest to get to it—to which the answer can only be, “Yes and no.”

Even as early as 1960, disaster-movie watchers were accustomed to the character-filler surrounding the central cast. The Crowded Sky never succeeds in making the viewer invested in the fate of any of these supporting players, although it is possible to derive some mild – and occasionally inadvertent – amusement from a couple of their subplots. (If all else fails, constructing a drinking-game out of the interior-monologue zoom-ins might be the way to go.)

..

With respect to the main characters, we have a problem of a different kind. There is no question that the storylines involving Mike and Kitty, separately and together, are the most interesting part of the film—but when all is said and done, and for all of the running-time they occupy, they don’t really have anything to do with the film’s central premise. And this is also largely true of the marital woes of the Heaths.

However, there is enough unexpected material in these subplots to keep them consistently interesting, even if only on a prurient level. It bears repeating that this film’s attitude to its female leads is almost startlingly free of judgement; nor is there any suggestion, in the working out of the plot, that anyone is being “punished” for their past behaviour. The actions of Cheryl and Kitty do have consequences, both for themselves and others, but there is no sense here that their choices require any special explanation or justification.

But for all that it gets right with respect to its central characters, there’s an unfortunate hole in the middle of The Crowded Sky. It is Dick Barnett who needs to learn a lesson; but it is a lesson that can only be learned at the expense of others. Furthermore, it is Barnett’s subplot alone that really impacts the disaster scenario – and vice-versa – but as with Steve Williams in Crash Landing, we’re left to wonder why the viewer should care whether this fundamentally unpleasant and arrogant individual has a good relationship with his son or not.

But even if we manage to part the smokescreen of its character material, The Crowded Sky’s disaster is oddly handled, with several dangling plot-ends. For instance— Apparently having set up air-traffic controller Norm’s absence from his post at the moment of crisis, there he is after all, dealing with the situation. But does he deal with it correctly? Are we, for instance, to understand that he was distracted—and perhaps should have order TS-17 to change direction as well as dive?

..

And speaking of distraction, we are repeatedly shown that Dale Heath has a tendency to zone-out while flying, which played a significant part in his first mid-air accident; yet when (excuse me) things come to the crunch here, we’re given no reason to think it a contributing factor.

The big question, however, is—are we intended to be critical of Mike for not reporting Barnett’s refusal to fly at the correct altitude? – or is Mike right in his assumption that a complaint from him would have made no difference?

No answers are provided to these questions; no guidance is offered as to what conclusions the viewer is supposed to draw. But perhaps that’s how it should be.

In the end, the importance of The Crowded Sky in the evolution of the disaster movie is the way it reflects the real world’s increasing understanding that an aviation accident is rarely if ever due to one factor, but usually the result of a combination of factors—and a combination of people.

Previously, we have seen mechanical failure (in The High And The Mighty and Crash Landing), a bomb (in Jet Storm and Jet Over The Atlantic), food poisoning (in Zero Hour!), and a random loony in the cockpit (in Julie) causing our aeroplane disasters. The Crowded Sky is the first disaster movie to give us the more realistic scenario of mechanical failure plus pilot error plus the personality or private issues of the people involved resulting in a crisis situation. If as a disaster movie per se it has its shortcomings, in this respect it is a vital one.

Footnote: Before anyone says anything— I’m very well aware that there is a specific genre significance to the casting of this film, but I’m saving commentary on that point for what I consider a more appropriate time. That is all…

This review is for Part 2 of the B-Masters’ 20th anniversary celebration!

Synopsis:The S.S. Claridon is on the open ocean, on a passage from San Francisco to Tokyo, when word reaches Captain Robert Adams (George Sanders) that a fire has broken out in the engine-room. In company with Third Officer Osborne (George Furness) and Second Mate Mace (Robert Martin), Adams goes below; he learns that the cause of the fire is a feed-line that broke, spraying burning oil around the boiler-room. As the crew battles the flames, Chief Engineer Pringle (Jack Kruschen) explains that although there is not much flammable material at the main point of the fire, there is a danger that the flames will be drawn up a flue: if there are any rusted areas in the flue, the fire will threaten the passenger decks. Word comes shortly afterwards that fire has broken out on C Deck, in the cabin-class dining-room. As crew-members rush fire-fighting equipment to the scene, Osborne asks the Captain if the passengers should be alerted; he is supported by Second Engineer Walsh, who foresees catastrophic consequences if the fire escalates. Adams, however, refuses to have the passengers alarmed, insisting that they be kept unaware of the situation as long as possible, and that there is no danger as long as the fire can be confined. With Pringle and Walsh overseeing the fire response, Adams and his senior officers mingle with the passengers, behaving as usual. Pringle and Walsh report that the dining-room fire is under control, but Pringle worries that a fire that hot might well have done serious damage somewhere else. In the main lounge, Cliff Henderson (Robert Stack), his wife, Laurie (Dorothy Malone), and their young daughter, Jill (Tammy Marihugh), play bingo; Jill is greatly excited when she wins the main prize of forty dollars. As they leave the lounge, Cliff and Laurie overhear two other passengers questioning an officer about smoke from a ventilator, and his reassuring answer to them. Adams, Pringle and Walsh debate the correct response to their situation: the older men recognise that stopping the ship for a proper overhaul will mean lost time and greatly increased costs to the company, which is already struggling to keep a ship of the Claridon’s age financially viable. Furthermore, if the incident should cause the Claridon to be dubbed a fire-trap and taken out of service, it would mean the loss of many crew jobs. Walsh in favour of stopping regardless, but is overruled by Adams and Pringle. Reluctantly, he passes on the order to check the remaining feed lines without shutting the steam off to his crew. One of his men notices that one of the pressure gauges on the boiler seems to be stuck. Crewman Hank Lawson (Woody Strode) hits it, causing the gauge to jump from 196 psi to 300 psi. The men can only hope that the gauge is faulty: the safety valves are supposed to blow at 230 psi. They try to reduce the heat feeding to the boiler in question, but the oil valves are frozen; one of the crew comments that this is where the feed line broke. To the urging of his men, Third Officer Cole (Richard Norris) can only reply that he cannot shut off the engine without orders; he sends for Pringle. Lawson comments grimly that if this boiler blows, it is likely to take the ones on either side of it along, too—as well as a chunk of the ship. When the men make one more effort to open the valve, it snaps off. Cole immediately orders the main fuel line shut off, even as one of the safety valves ruptures, pouring superheated steam into the room. Pringle and Walsh arrive and assess the situation: Pringle orders Walsh to get the crew out; he will use a hammer to try and open the valve on top of the boiler. Walsh argues with him but cannot dissuade him; Pringle finally gets Walsh to leave by ordering him to see to the bulkheads doors, which may be the ship’s only hope. The first bulkhead has barely been sealed when the boiler explodes, the force ripping upwards through the decks of the ship…

Comments: Disaster movies are – let’s bite the bullet here – formulaic beasts. The pleasure we derive from watching one, aside from the Schadenfreude associated with seeing the cast getting whacked in colourfully gruesome ways, may well stem less from any attempt at originality – change the formula too much and it will cease to be a disaster movie – than from an imaginative tweaking of the formula.

Often the greatest hurdle that a disaster movie has to overcome is the question of what to do with its second act. Screenwriters usually have no difficulty figuring out how to set up a disaster, or how to resolve it; the problem is what to do with the middle part of the story. Disaster movies that fail tend to fall at this hurdle, resorting to character scenes that in context are rarely other than padding, the film twiddling its thumbs while the clock runs down. And while pointless “character stuff” may be tolerable when we’re talking about what people like John Wayne, Clair Trevor, Dana Andrews, Glenn Ford, Burt Lancaster, Myrna Loy and James Stewart could do, by the time it’s being dished up by the likes of Avery Schreiber, Jimmie Walker and Charo, we’re dealing with something that could rightly be condemned as a crime against humanity.

Conversely, the better disaster movies – take the textbook examples of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno – often succeed because, by their very nature, they manage to keep their disaster rolling through the entire film and so avoid the dead patch in the middle. Yet even The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno do include character scenes at the beginning while setting up their disasters.

Which brings me to 1960’s The Last Voyage, a most remarkable disaster movie in that:

its disaster occupies a higher proportion of its running-time than any other disaster movie I’ve ever seen;

its character scenes occupy a lower proportion of its running-time than any other disaster movie I’ve ever seen.

Of course, the irony here is that the very things about The Last Voyage that catch the eye today – the reality of its settings, and above all the relentless nature of its disaster – provoked critical wrath at the time of the film’s initial release.

—

The Last Voyage was the work of Andrew and Virginia Stone, who were also responsible for Julie. As I remarked about that film, two notable characteristics of the Stones as film-makers were, firstly, their ability to do genre films just a little differently, and secondly, their preference for shooting on location, and in location (that is, in real buildings, and in the case of Julie on a real plane), which gives their films a look and feel unlike that of other, similar productions.

And perhaps none of their films illustrate these tendencies quite so comprehensively as The Last Voyage, for which the Stones put their cast and crew through the ringer on a real ship—and not just any ship, either…

In fact, the S. S. Claridon is played by none other than the S. S. Île de France, a vessel with a long and proud history. Famous in its early days for its beauty, its luxurious appointments and its art deco interiors, the Île de France became a fashionable and popular vessel in spite of its comparative lack of speed, and was the ship of choice for many on the Paris-New York route between 1926 and 1939. It was also, as it happened, the last commercial ship to leave France before the outbreak of WWII, making it safely to New York with a passenger load more than 400 people beyond its usual capacity. While the Île de France was crossing the Atlantic, sixteen other ships on the same route were torpedoed and sunk.

In 1940, the Île de France was loaned to Britain, and began service as a transport for war materials and as a troop ship. In 1945 – having been almost gutted to make more and more room for cargo and men – the ship was returned to France. After a further period of service ferrying US and Canadian troops home from Europe, the Île de France was refurbished and began work again as a commercial liner in 1947, eventually resuming the Paris-New York run. In addition to regaining its popularity with travellers, the Île de France played a significant role as a rescue ship following the collision of the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm off Nantucket in 1956.

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However, by this time the venerable ship was beginning to show – and feel – its age; and in 1958 its owners, Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT, or “the French Line”), not only retired the Île de France, but sold her to a Japanese firm for scrap.

And this is where Andrew Stone entered the picture. As coincidence would have it, he had been inspired by the wreck of the Andrea Doria to write a screenplay for a shipboard disaster movie. MGM expressed interest in the project but, not unreasonably, asked Stone where he thought he was going to get an ocean liner? Even less unreasonably, the owners of liners still in service wanted nothing to do with the project.

When Stone heard of the proposed wrecking of the Île de France, he must have thought all his Christmases had come at once. He began negotiation with her new Japanese owners for permission to shoot his film on the ship itself—arguing that if the ship were to be scrapped anyway, it wouldn’t matter if a film crew did [*cough*] a little damage first. CGT got wind of these proceedings and intervened, at length agreeing to the arrangement (in exchange for “compensation”) on the condition that all insignia that could in any way identify the ship or its former owners be removed.

If these manoeuvres were really supposed to disguise the Île de France, they were a signal failure. The ship was not only recognised by audiences worldwide, but many critics reacted angrily to what they perceived as the indignities heaped upon it during the making of The Last Voyage. Even LIFE Magazine, which did an article on the film’s production – the tone of which teeters between horror at Andrew Stone’s proceedings and reluctant admiration of his chutzpah – went with the condemnatory title, Farcical Finish Of A Famous Old Ship, speaking of the Île de France as “the ill-fated victim of movie realism”.

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When the critics drew breath from complaining about the treatment of the Île de France, their other main criticism of The Last Voyage was that the film was “too much”. Disaster movies were a new genre at the time – the term “disaster movie” was still yet to be coined – and the few that had made it onto screens were of the restrained, “a plane might crash but doesn’t” variety, with disaster threatening but not happening, and the body count low-to-non-existent.

The Last Voyage doesn’t let audiences off so easy. In fact, its disaster starts – or more correctly, the viewer is notified that it has started – sixty-six seconds into the film; and it ends only with the end credits. Enjoyment of this film therefore requires the capacity to just roll with it, as a bad situation gets worse – and worse – and worse…

Even so, it is unlikely that modern viewers will feel that the film is “too much”, while use of a real ship simply heightens the drama. On the other hand, there’s no getting away from the fact that the film must have been insanely dangerous to make. The Last Voyage scored an Oscar nomination for its special effects, which is a bit ironic: there are very few special effects as we now understand that term on display here – and very few stunt people, either: just a lot of pyrotechnics and some foolhardy highly courageous actors.

There is no shortage of scenes here to make the viewer cringe and gasp. The moment that always stays with me finds Edmond O’Brien up to his hips in water, with no personal protection beyond a completely inadequate pair of eye-shades, waving an oxyacetylene torch around with one bare hand while brushing a shower of sparks out of his hair with the other. Overall, however, it is probably poor Dorothy Malone who gets the worst of it, spending about three-quarters of the film dirty and dishevelled, lying unmoving amongst piles of debris, or up to her chin in water.

(I haven’t read it, but apparently Robert Stack has a few choice words to say about this production in his autobiography: “It was called The Last Voyage and for me it nearly was…”)

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The Last Voyage opens with another of the Stones’ defining movie traits, a negative one this time: the Unnecessary Voiceover. In the soothingly British tones of George Furness (who also plays Third Officer Osborne), the viewer is given a potted history of the S. S. Claridon and foreshadows her date with destiny:

“The S. S. Claridon: a proud ship; a venerable ship; but as ships go, an old ship, a very old ship. For thirty-eight years she has weathered everything the elements could throw at her: typhoons, zero-zero fogs, the scorching heat of the tropics. Now she is scheduled for only five more crossings. Then a new ship, a plush, streamlined beauty, will take her place. It is then that the Claridon will fade into oblivion. She has an appointment with the scrap-yard – but it’s an appointment she will never keep – for this is the last voyage…”

This in itself is fine, but The Voice will subsequently reappear at irregular intervals throughout the film to comment on the action—usually with the effect of jerking the viewer out of it. I can only think that Andrew Stone had insufficient faith in his screenplay; screenplays: he did this sort of thing far too often.

The first stretch of voiceover cuts to the title card, and from there directly to a handwritten note that’s just been handed to Captain Robert Adams: Fire in the engine room.

The camera pulls back to show us Adams doing what, apparently, he does best: schmoozing the passengers. He excuses himself from lunch and takes a leisurely stroll across the dining-room, exchanging pleasantries here and there, before getting out of earshot and consulting with his Third Officer and Second Mate. The credits then begin to roll; before they end, we will have seen the engine-room well on fire, learned the cause of it, and been warned of the potential danger to the ship at large. We will also learn that another fire has broken out in one of the passenger areas—

–

—although not that occupied by the only passengers to which The Last Voyage will pay any particular attention. At this point we are introduced to Cliff and Laurie Henderson and their young daughter, Jill. We learn that Cliff has been transferred from Sacramento to Tokyo for his job and, rather than travel directly, by plane, the couple decided upon the romance of a cruise to get them to their new home. After lunch, the Hendersons play bingo, before ditching Jill at the puppet show being performed in the ship’s crèche and taking off for the bar, where they dance and drink martinis, and Laurie tries but fails to get Cliff to utter those Three Little Words.

Meanwhile, the differing mentalities of the crew are beginning to make themselves felt, in particular that of Second Engineer Walsh. Growing less and less convinced that the emergency can be contained, Walsh lobbies for the ship to be shut down, at least for a few hours, so that the situation can be properly addressed. Adams isn’t having any, however, insisting that you can’t stop a ship for every little thing and crops up; and he gets some support from his Chief Engineer, Pringle, who in spite of worrying that a fire that hot must have done some damage to the ship’s infrastructure, puts it in terms of cost, overtime and longshoreman, and potential lost jobs should the ship be withdrawn from service as a consequence.

Walsh accepts this but clearly isn’t happy, muttering about the appointment of captains on the basis of their social skills rather than their seamanship. Pringle calls him on his attitude, upon which Walsh explains that his own father sailed under a captain more interested in speed records than protocol, and in keeping the passengers happy than in keeping them safe:

Pringle: “What ship was that?”Walsh: “The Titanic.”

In context this sounds like a tasteless joke, but it turns out to be the literal truth: his old man’s fate is used to explain the chip on Walsh’s shoulder, his problems with authority, and some of the choices he makes as the emergency escalates into a full-scale disaster.

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Another crewmember who we have already met in passing but will see a lot more of from this point is Hank Lawson, played by Woody Strode—and if you’ll forgive me, I feel compelled to step aside for the moment and make the following observation:

For all that we pay out on William Shatner for this tendency, did Woody Strode EVER keep his shirt on in a movie!?

Though I’ll grant you this: the end result of Bill and Woody taking off their respective shirts isn’t quite the same…

In any event, Woody must have been in hog-heaven while making The Last Voyage: he goes shirtless for the duration.

As events in the boiler-room begin to spiral out of control, we briefly visit with Mr Unnecessary Voiceover, who describes to us what we can see perfectly well for ourselves, the passengers enjoying the various facilities offered by the Claridon. (This includes a cinema, where we see the beginning of a newsreel—an MGM newsreel, of course…) We also stop by the Hendersons’ stateroom, where Laurie is realising that she left her purse in the bar. Shaking his head with husbandly condescension, Cliff goes off to get it.

Down in the bowels, it has become clear that disaster is imminent. Pringle and Walsh clash over which of them gets to undertake the suicide mission of trying to open the valve on top of the blocked boiler; Pringle “wins” by ordering Walsh to see to the bulkheads.

Barely has the first bulkhead been lowered than the boiler goes. The explosion tears upwards, ripping a vertical hole through several decks and blowing through the wall of the main dining-area, killing several passengers in the process—as well as the unfortunate Pringle.

–

(In a grimly explicit moment, one which in its small way is indicative of the contemporary crumbling of the Production Code, the crewman later sent to inspect the damage reports, “There isn’t enough of the Chief left to scoop up.”)

Cliff Henderson, halfway to the bar when the explosion occurs, turns and sprints back towards his stateroom, only to find his way barred by a gaping hole in the floor and a precariously teetering grand-piano. He negotiates this – just – and makes it to his room, where he finds a double emergency on his hands: Laurie is trapped under a fallen steel girder, unable to move her legs, and Jill is crouched on a narrow ledge in the bedroom, on the far side of what used to be the floor…

It is hard to know what to make of Tammy Marihugh’s performance as Jill. She was a few years older than she’s playing here, which gives a sense of dislocation to the character; but on the whole her reactions to her situation are fair and reasonable—even when she’s literally kicking and screaming and making things difficult for those trying to help her; while her ability to stay in character is rather impressive. (That said, on occasion it’s hard to shake the feeling that the kid was genuinely terrified.) On the whole, however, or at least once the disaster kicks in, I find her – un-annoying – which is surely the most you can ask of a small child in a disaster movie.

From this point The Last Voyage splits into three main plot-threads: the Hendersons’ terrible predicament; Walsh’s increasingly focused efforts to get what’s left of the engine-room crew out alive; and Captain Adam’s paralysis in the face of disaster.

It isn’t until near the end that we find out what’s on Adams’ mind. For now we simply see his obstinate refusal to cross the Rubicon indicated by assembling the passengers and getting the life-boats ready. He does allow his officers to radio for any other ships in the vicinity, but otherwise he pins his hopes on the reinforcing of the bulkheads, to defend against the water that is pouring in too fast for the bilge-pumps to handle. This task is undertaken by Walsh and the others, who try desperately to build a barricade to hold back the threat of the in-rushing waters, even though they fear their efforts will be futile…

–

Meanwhile, Cliff is trying to reach the terrified Jill, but twice nearly plunges to his own death, while Jill ends up half-dangling into space, clutching desperately at a telephone cord…

Having seen Jill scramble back onto her narrow perch, Cliff tries to find another way. He turns a piece of loose planking into a makeshift bridge, but soon realises it won’t bear his weight and that Jill will have to come to him. He makes a rope of sorts out of a blanket, fashioning a noose at one end. Tossing this to Jill with the admonition not to lean forward while trying to catch it, he talks her through slipping it around herself—and then has to talk her into crawling across the plank…

Upstairs, dissension is breaking out amongst the officers. Osborne urges preparations for evacuation, only to be sneeringly accused of hysteria by Captain Adams. Mace, who supports the Captain, is put in charge of rounding up any doctors and getting the injured passengers tended.

But the latter never really eventuates. This turns out to be one of the most significant ways in which The Last Voyage tweaks its formula: I can’t think of any transport-related disaster movie that spends less time with its passengers than this one. Instead, with those in charge concentrating upon the task of saving “the passengers”, collectively, no-one has much time to spare for a passenger—which creates a desperate situation for the Hendersons.

Cliff, having rescued Jill, now turns his attention to Laurie. The debris under which she is pinned is beyond him, so he goes looking for help—and has terrible trouble finding anyone willing to stop the large-scale disaster response they’re involved in long enough to help one particular person. Cliff, conversely, doesn’t give a toss about anyone else’s problems – he berates the steward who has been looking after him and his family for following orders and helping the injured passengers in the dining-room instead of doing what he says – and becomes more and more obsessively focused upon doing something to help Laurie, and the hell with everybody else.

–

Word that the bulkhead is beginning to leak reaches the officers, along with a message that the nearest ship, the Hawaiian Fisherman, is fifty minutes away. At long last, Adams allows an SOS to be sent.

Cliff finally rounds up three fellow-passengers, but their efforts to free Laurie only make things worse. Cliff concludes that they need an oxyacetylene torch, and the youngest of the group runs to the wheel-house to find out where he could get one—encountering exactly the same stonewall of preoccupation that Cliff did: officers come and go, Adams barks instructions, and no-one pays the slightest heed to the boy’s repeated demands for help. Inevitably, it is Osborne who finally responds, telling the boy, in effect, that if the torch isn’t at one end of the ship (the engine-room), it’ll be at the other (with the gear).

On his way back the young man encounters Cliff, who reports bitterly that the other men who were helping them have given up. The two then separate: kid then goes forward, while Cliff heads for the engine-room. This brings him into the midst of the men working feverishly to shore up the bulkhead—and they aren’t much interested in his problems, either, although Hank Lawson does take a moment to direct Cliff to the generator-room.

Walsh, however, is in the middle of reporting that the water has risen another eight feet in spite of the pumps going full bore. When he receives this message, Adams orders Mace to start looking into whether the ship can stay afloat if both the boiler- and engine-rooms are flooded—but after a long hesitation, also allows Osborne to start assembling the passengers.

Osborne’s instruction to don life-jackets directly contradicts the last PA announcement assuring everyone that there’s no cause for alarm, and confirms Laurie’s worst fears. Meanwhile, Cliff has found the torch – the huge, heavy, metal cylinder kind – and begins the unenviable task of manoeuvring it back to the cabin (mostly by dragging it by the gauge – ulp!). Along the way he encounters Lawson, who breaks the cheery news that this particular rig needs two cylinders – he’s got the oxygen, but he also needs the acetylene – and that the second cylinder (even if it can be found) weighs over two hundred pounds.

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Cliff’s attitude of mingled despair and obstinacy catches Lawson, who begins to help him with the gear—and subsequently spends most of the rest of the film enmeshed in the Hendersons’ woes.

The character of Hank Lawson is one of the most interesting things about The Last Voyage. At no point in the film to we get so much of a hint that Lawson is just “the black guy”, let alone “the token black guy”. Instead, he has equal standing as one of many people trying to deal with a terrible situation—and, as the film goes on, an increasingly important one.

Walsh catches Lawson as he and Cliff are struggling out of the flooding engine-room, angrily ordering him back to the bulkhead. Torn between this and Cliff’s guilt-trip – “How’d you feel if it was your wife?” – Lawson finally chooses the latter, partly because he knows the efforts below deck are only forestalling the inevitable.

On that subject, Adams now finds himself under siege from Osborne, who wants to launch the life-boats, and Ragland, who thinks the crewmen should be called out of the engine-room—and dismisses both their demands.

But in fact, Walsh isn’t waiting for orders: he’s already trying to clear his men out—but too late. The bulkhead goes, and with it most of the men below decks…

Cliff and Lawson, fighting upstream like salmon, make it back to the cabin, where Lawson’s expert eye confirms that only a cutting-torch can help.

As the order to evacuate sounds again and again, Laurie tries to argue Cliff into taking Jill and getting off the ship; he compromises with a promise to see Jill into a boat and then come back. He leaves Laurie to be watched over by Lawson—setting up perhaps the film’s most indelible moment, as Laurie accepts that only one thing will make Cliff leave her behind…

–

I said that the fact that Hank Lawson is black doesn’t matter, and for the most part that’s true; but nevertheless it adds an unmistakable edge to this scene – filmed in 1959, remember – of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white woman asking a black man to please kill her… It is no wonder that there are more layers than one to Hank Lawson’s instinctive recoil.

And this is not the only surprising moment of interaction. Cliff does refuse to leave – Laurie is quite right about that – and it is Lawson to whom the Hendersons ultimately entrust the job of getting Jill off the boat.

Lawson only succeeds in doing so on his second attempt, though. Amidst escalating panic, Cliff again tries and fails to get someone to listen to him about Laurie. However, word of the fate of the men below decks has reached the wheel-house, while computations have confirmed that there is only fifty minutes left in which to get everyone off the ship. Encountering Lawson – “Your wife’s talking crazy!” – Cliff hesitates, then hands over Jill, while he makes one final effort to get help for Laurie. He bails up Adams, and wrings from him an order for Walsh to go to the Hendersons’ cabin.

Immediately, however, the Captain’s full attention becomes fixed upon the imminent collapse of a funnel…

Lawson, meanwhile, gets Jill to a boat, but as he is handing her over she breaks away from him. He catches her again but – sigh – seeing a small white child struggling with a large black man, an indignant passenger intervenes, allowing Jill to bolt. Lawson runs after her, shouting for someone to stop her but, intent upon their own flight to safety, no-one does.

Jill is clinging to her mother and sobbing when Lawson catches up with her. He stops only to tell Laurie that Cliff is getting help, then forcibly removes Jill from the scene, to the point of wrenching the child’s desperately clutching hands away from the door-frame of the cabin. In spite of her shrieks and struggles he bears her determinedly up onto the deck. On this second attempt, no-one interferes, and he does convey Jill into a life-boat – just – literally dropping her into the arms of those below as the boat is winched down.

–

As the boat moves away, Lawson shouts after it despairingly: “When you get picked up, get an acetylene tank! Send it back to me! Did you hear me…?”

Lawson reports all this to Cliff and Laurie, but in a muttered aside tells Cliff he has little hope, and that they’re running out of time. Cliff replies that he’s done enough and should save himself, but Lawson refuses to leave.

The various viewpoints then collide on the top-deck: Adams and Osborne contemplating what will happen to the boat if the pressure in the hold continues to build, Walsh begging for help to free two men trapped below before they drown, Cliff demanding to know why Walsh isn’t helping his wife before she drowns, as he was ordered to do.

By now Walsh has reached the point of rank insubordination, and he responds with a counter-argument that his men are in the most immediate danger and must be rescued first. (My sympathies are with Walsh here, who has already lost all but six of his thirty-five man crew.) As the engineer turns away, Cliff grabs him angrily.

However, what might have happened next between the two frightened and furious men is forestalled when, as Osborne feared, a pressure explosion blasts through the deck-hatch, sending smoke and flames billowing into the air, and dangerous debris in all directions.

What might have happened between Cliff and Walsh then does happen between Walsh and Adams, the Captain responding to a vicious verbal attack – “You’re a joke, a stumbling, incompetent, career-happy joke!” – with a blow in the face.

It is Walsh’s words that have done the damage, though. This confrontation seems to send Adams into a kind of fugue state: he becomes incapable of giving orders, instead going over and over all the ways that this might never have happened, if only, if only, as his contemptuous officers increasingly take matters into their own hands.

–

Adams then withdraws to his cabin, sitting slumped behind his desk as he reads over and over again the letter from his employers confirming his appointment as Commodore of the Main Star fleet…

Cliff and Lawson, meanwhile, are on their way to the engine-room, either to help or to get help. Their journey takes them through the dining-room, which is filling up with the water pouring in through the open port-holes. They meet up with what’s left of the crew, whose only thought is of getting off the ship. When Lawson tells Cliff that’s he’s going to find Osborne to see if he has any suggestions, Cliff’s despairing expression indicates that he reads into this Lawson’s own withdrawal from the situation.

Laurie herself, left on her own, has been having a dark night of the soul, struggling to drag towards herself a jagged piece of glass from the piles of debris around her…although in the end she can’t do it, flinging the glass away and settling for terrified hysterics instead. She has some reason to regret this choice, however, when the seawater begins to creep into the cabin, rising inexorably towards her mouth and nose…

As it happens, Cliff has underestimated Lawson. He gets no help from Osborne, intent upon getting the last life-boat launched, but does he finally succeeds in recruiting Walsh, now that all of his men who can be rescued, have been. Walsh tries to order Lawson into the life-boat, but he has about as much success at that as Adams did ordering Walsh to forget about rescuing the trapped crewmen. As the two men head back below, Osborne steps into the life-boat and orders it lowered.

But once in the cabin, Walsh can only confirm the hopelessness of Laurie’s situation. Cliff still refuses to leave her, until Laurie tells him he’s making it so much harder for her—and what about Jill? Must she be orphaned?

–

Still Cliff hesitates…

Of the officers, only Adams and Ragland remain on board (they’re both unmarried). Adams pulls himself together sufficiently to collect the log-books, but at that moment the funnel, which has been threatening collapse for some time, finally gives way, crashing through the main deck—and Adams’ cabin.

Osborne jumps back on board to go in search of his fellow officers, ordering the life-boat away at the same time. He and Ragland dash in to look for the Captain, but he has been crushed under the collapsing deck. He dies, still muttering about how Walsh shouldn’t have said those things, and how the decisions he made were sound, sound…

By now the ocean is now dotted with small boats pulling away from the Claridon—but there is also one boat pulling towards it. It is an emissary from the Hawaiian Fisherman, of whose approach we have heard intermittently throughout the disaster; and across the waters drift those magical words:

“Is anybody there? We’ve got the tank – the acetylene tank!”

As Lawson stares incredulously, the small boat draws near—and we see that it’s the same young man who tried to help Cliff in the first place who’s doing all the shouting.

Cliff finally succeeded in sending Walsh away from the cabin (if no further), so he on hand to help Lawson haul the acetylene tank on board. The two race back to the Hendersons’ cabin, where by now Cliff is holding Laurie’s chin up against the rising waters. It takes a struggle, and the endless contents of Lawson’s capacious pockets, but the men manage to get the torch working. It takes minutes that seem endless before the obstruction is cut away, however, and Laurie is gasping and spluttering as the water rises above her mouth when Walsh finally utters the command to pull her free…

–

And free she is; but water is now pouring into the ship through the hole in the deck, the Claridon is beginning to slide under the surface—and Laurie cannot walk…

During production of The Last Voyage, the Île de France was anchored in the harbour of Osaka. Andrew Stone’s contract allowed him to do just about anything he liked to the ship—although not without significant opposition from the Osaka authorities and repeated interference from the salvage company, so that it took a combination of belligerence, bribery, legal threats and sneakiness to get the job done.

Consequently, almost everything that happens in the film – the flooding of the engine-rooms, the explosion through the deck, even the collapsing of the funnel – was achieved on the spot through practical means; while the ship’s indoor pool became the Hendersons’ flooded cabin. Stone’s only un chieved ambition was to tilt-sink the ship so far that the propellers would show above the water-line, but the salvage company, fearful of its investment, intervened.

The ship was one thing: it could only sit there and suffer. The cast was another, and Stone understandably found himself with a mutiny on his hands that made the one faced by Captain Adams seem trivial in comparison. The main cast put up with put up with the danger and discomfort, albeit not without protest (at one point in the production, a furious Edmond O’Brien called Andrew Stone, “A psychopath with a death wish”); but the extras flat-out refused to participate in the blowing-up of the dining-room.

Stone got around that problem via the involvement of a handful of American marines, who were originally hired as his demolition crew, and stuck around to take bit parts. Since no individual Marine would back down from a challenge in front of his companions, all of them ended up participating in the scene. (Stone presumably used similar tactics to convince a subset of the Marines to wear drag during the filming.) However – proving, I guess, that the director wasn’t a total lunatic – those closest to the explosion are actually mannequins, as is amusingly evident if you pause the film.

–

Ultimately only the film’s closing sequence was faked: the final struggle to leave the ship as it slips beneath the waves was too homicidally dangerous even for Andrew Stone—and besides, the waters around Osaka were full of venomous jelly-fish. (The extras also baulked when Stone tried to film a few of the traditional “panicking people plunge into the sea” scenes.) As a belated concession to common sense, and perhaps in celebration of the fact that no-one had actually been killed or maimed during production, these final scenes were shot in a nice safe tank in Santa Monica.

(Even so— By this time Edmond O’Brien had had enough, and refused to participate: Walsh is mysteriously absent as the others fight the rising waters.)

And so the last survivors of the Claridon swim for their lives. They are hauled to safety into a waiting life-boat, watching in silence as the dying ship finally sinks out sight below the churning waters…